Superstition

I propose that our conception of ancient peoples is mistaken and childish.  It may actually reveal more about us than about them.  Interpretation is always a double-edged sword as it reveals as much about the interpreter as it does the thing or subject interpreted.  Let’s consider the concept of superstition.

It is well known that fisherman and sailors are notoriously superstitious.  This is well documented on the only reality TV show worth paying attention to, the perennially compelling, Deadliest Catch.  Sig Hansen and the crew of The Northwestern always bite the head off a herring (supposedly a Norwegian tradition) to kick off every crab season.  The Hillstrand brothers of The Time Bandit always make sure they leave the dock backwards and spin counter-clockwise, called the “Swedish spin” to get rid of any bad ju-ju.  There are countless others, but you get the idea.

In my previous article about this subject, I mentioned that Freddy Maugatai, formerly of the F/V Cornelia Marie, now of the F/V Wizard, smeared his face with the blood of a cod as an offering to the Crab Gods.  The Wizard was not catching any crab and the crew needed to shake things up and exorcise the bad luck and the bad moods.  They shaved each others’ heads into mohawks, gutted cod, drank blood and smeared their faces for good luck.

Whether or not this actually has any effect on outcomes, ask yourself a question:  if you were a crab fisherman and you had to pick between two different crews to work with, who would you choose?  1.)  The crew that is a little nutty and a little superstitious, that has weird rituals and traditions, that bites heads of herring and smears their faces with blood and offers sacrifices to the Crab Gods.  OR  2.)  The crew that says there is no such thing as luck, superstition is stupid, just do your job.

If you were in the middle of the Bering sea for two weeks straight, catching crab all day and all night, what crew would you want to be on?Beyond this, let’s take a look at the etymology of the word superstition.  I looked up superstition in my OED, and was surprised to learn that a now obsolete meaning of superstition used to be:  extraordinary; excessive; superfluous.  The wikipedia entry indicates the same thing.  This is interesting because it coincides with the idea of sacrifice.  Sacrifice is a squandering of something valuable but ultimately superfluous.  The fisherman sacrifices a cod or a herring, in The Iliad, they sacrifice cows left and right.  We see here, a similarity between superstition and sacrifice.

Modern people tend to think of everything in terms of cause and effect.  It is also hard for modern people to understand the idea of doing something for no “immediate” or “visible” reason.  Our modus operandi is immediate gratification and accumulation.  So with that as our mindset, when we find out that ancient people sacrificed animals, we assume they also believed in literal cause and effect “magic,” and that they did it in the hopes they would get something in return.

A modus operandi of accumulation follows from a sense of lack.  But if one’s baseline in life is not a sense of lack, but a sense of abundance, then one is inclined to sacrifice rather than accumulate.  If your life is overflowing, then superfluous, ceremonious acts of superstition is like a form of chest-thumping.  This counters the typical view of ancient ritual and sacrifice as fearful, superstitious people offering something to the Gods with the hopes of getting something in return, in an extremely simple cause to effect relationship.

Superstition is unreasonable, but let’s face it, life itself is unreasonable.  There is no quintessential reason why we are alive or why anything exists at all.  Even if we believe in God, his ultimate reason for creating a manifest universe is hard to fathom.  What it boils down to is:  do we view life as a burden or a gift?  Do we approach life from a sense of deficit or a sense of abundance?  Is the glass half full or half empty?

At the end of the day, it’s always a dilemma to decide what you want to do with your spare time, your spare resources, and spare energy.  Georges Bataille addresses this, in economic terms, in his book The Accursed Share.It is excess, waste, and doing something for no reason at all, that actually affirms that life is a gift and not a burden.  The slave takes no risks and the master is willing to risk it all.  Sacrifice and superstition parallel these notions as expressions of fearlessness from loss and an acceptance of fate.  You can prepare as much as possible, but sometimes there are no guarantees.

Joshua Chamberlain came up with a thought experiment about a car accident involving people on a cell phone.  We can, of course, blame the car accident on the carelessness of people talking on a cell phone while driving, but on the other hand, what brought those two particular people to that particular intersection, on that particular day, at that particular time, involves so many unrelated circumstances and factors that one might as well call it fate.  Conversely, people drive carelessly, yet avoid accidents all the time.  There is no single ultimate cause of a particular event.  Fate always plays a role.

The luxury of squandering is what makes life more than mere survival.  If I’ve done all my work and I still have time to spare, I can write poetry or music with my surplus time and energy.  Superstition operates on a similar level and turns life into a game or a form of play beyond cause and effect survival.  It is not an expression of lack or deficit that asks for something from the Gods, rather, it is an expression of abundance and a giving back to the Gods.  Only the king has the luxury to gamble with his life and play with death.

Fractured

An excerpt from my forthcoming fictional memoir, Fractured:  My Life as an Unpublished, Alcoholic Novelist.  Enjoy!  -Swanny

♠♠♠

I had spent three years slumming around the city, blowing all my money on drugs, alcohol and sex in a misguided attempt to do research for my novel.  Booze, coke, and unruly women:  you name it, I did it.

I eventually lost my job and started playing acoustic guitar on the streets downtown to make money.  During the summer I slept in parks and in the winter I stayed in various government buildings with other homeless bums.  The bums and I lived like kings.  We knew all the nooks and crannies of the capitol building, memorized the cycles of the security, befriended the police officers, and staked out all the best heater vents.  I brushed my teeth with my finger and bathed in public fountains.  I usually took meals at the church, but sometimes resorted to eating insects or dandelions and other edible flora and fauna.

I spent most days playing RuneScape and other online video games at the public library.  I developed rivalries and alliances with the kids that would hang out after school.  You read that correctly:  an adult plotting and scheming with, and against, kids more than half his age over a fantasy role-playing game.  My character was a Paladin and I led many a quest, raided many a dungeon, slayed many a dragon, and crafted many a rune stone.  I even became the leader of a guild but it all unraveled when I was busted for exploiting a bug in the game that, in effect, allowed me to run a Ponzi scheme in virtual gold.

The public library was basically a babysitter for after-school kids and adult ne’er-do-wells.  At one point I had to have a meeting with a police officer, the head librarian, and one of the mothers of the after-school kids after I sold her son my Sorcerer character for $100.   There I was, a full grown man playing free MMORPGs at the library when I should have been in the middle of a career and starting a family.

In summary, it was impossible to be a bigger slime-ball.  I loathed myself, but there was something romantic about being an unkempt derelict thumbing his nose at the traditional lifestyle.

My dream was to be a writer, but I had nothing to write about.  There was no defining moment of my life.  I experienced no catastrophic trauma or abuse as a child.  I grew up in a traditional household, went to college, got good grades, graduated, and got a day job.  In short, hardship was unknown to me.

I wrote story after story where the good guy beats the bad guy and saves the girl.  It was real amateur, sophomoric stuff.  No nuance, just knight-in-shining-armor, happily-ever-after type crap.   My characters were one dimensional.  The good guy was noble and invincible, the bad guy was lecherous and evil, and the girl was helpless and beautiful.  Publishers called it juvenile, misogynistic, and laughably innocent.  It got old quick.

My real life fantasy had always been to lawfully and violently kill a man right before he’s about to defile a super-model virgin against her will.  This had about a one-in-a-billion chance of happening in reality, so when people scoffed at my fictional stories, I became cynical and disillusioned.

One mentor told me to go out and get some life experience so I had something substantive to actually write about.  People want to read something they can relate to, my mentor said.  Get out there in the underbelly, amongst the people, and do some research, he said.  Well, needless to say, I took him up on his suggestion to really get out there and gain some life experience.  I did a little too much research and ultimately wound up in Saint Jesus rehab facility.

I hated Saint Jesus even though it got me off the streets.  It was four torturous months of sharing your feelings and your nightmarish past with total strangers.  Every day I not only had to tell people the gritty details of my own past, I also had the pleasure to hear everyone else’s.  Addiction, molestation, crime, rape, arson, and drugs that I didn’t even know existed.  It was like waking up from a bad dream, only to realize that actual life was even more horrifying and the bad dream was pleasant by comparison.

I was regaled with stories of PCP, crack, cat tranquilizer, jenkem, cough syrup, mouthwash, helium, and even scented markers.  One knucklehead was keen on sticking his face over a bonfire just to get lightheaded for a few minutes.  Sex addicts, masturbation addicts, video game addicts, internet addicts, cell-phone addicts, work addicts, and job addicts.  What an embarrassment.  Whatever happened to a good old fashioned, traditional American drinking problem?

It was one tale of lost innocence after another after another:  victimization, debauchery and broken taboos.  Rock-bottom was when my scumbag roommate recounted the painstaking process of making jenkem.  I wanted to vomit.  This is where dreams went to die.

I know this is the part where I’m supposed to say I sympathized with them and I could relate to them and I learned a lot from them.  But I can’t.  I hated these people.  I despised these cretins from the bottom of my heart.

One day, when I’m sitting on my rocking chair, with my grand-kids on my knee, I’ll tell them stories about absolutely nothing that happened there.  The only highlight of my stay at Saint Jesus was when my roommate gave me a self-help book about making your dreams become a reality.  As soon as he left the facility he quickly rekindled his love affair with jenkem and was killed in a drive by shooting, but I’ll always cherish that book.

Father Kunz

In the town of Dane, in the county of Dane, in the State of Wisconsin sits St. Michael Church and Parish.  The Church is famous all around the county for putting on Friday Fish Fries to raise money for the parish.  The fish fry in the Catholic Church gymnasium is a Wisconsin tradition.

Father Alfred Kunz worked the deep fryers himself.  I never met the man, but I think this picture says it all.

Father Kunz was murdered on March 4, 1998.  It is still unsolved.  Theories abound, but authorities have not given up and the latest word is that they are moving ever closer to a resolution.

You really couldn’t ask for a juicier story yet I talk to many people in the area who have forgotten all about it.  I knew an old man, a retired detective, who had done his own research.  He gave me a rough draft, I’ve done some of my own digging, and I want to throw a few ideas out there.

The first thing you need to know is that Kunz was old-school, in fact he was old-old-  school.  There was a right way and a wrong way.  After his death, a parishioner was quoted in a local paper saying that he “worshiped the ground Kunz walked on” for his definitiveness.  In a time when few people want to be leaders, in a time when few want to tell people what they need to hear, in a time when few want to stick to their guns and remain unmoved, I can appreciate this.

Kunz offered the mass in Latin for those who wished to hear it in Latin.  People drove from all around to hear the Latin mass.  From what I understand this was a point of contention within the Church and within the community.  In the 1960s, the Catholic Church held a council to address its relation to the modern world, known as the Second Vatican Council.  Among the discussions and ideas implemented was the allowance and encouragement for Mass to be held in vernacular languages.  In essence, Mass need not only be held in Latin.

To move from Latin to vernacular language may seem harmless and utilitarian.  But being interested in language and translation, myself, I can understand why this might rub old-schoolers the wrong way.  Every word has a connotation beyond its literal meaning, and you always lose a little something in translation.  Furthermore, there are some words in other languages that have no perfect one-for-one translation.  For the second article in a row, I must invoke Plato and reiterate: when modes of expression change, we change.  Arthur Schopenhauer, himself, said that if mankind ever forgets the Latin language we will enter a new age of barbarism:

The abolition of Latin as the universal language of learned men, together with the rise of that provincialism which attaches to national literatures, has been a real misfortune for the cause of knowledge in Europe. For it was chiefly through the medium of the Latin language that a learned public existed in Europe at all — a public to which every book as it came out directly appealed. The number of minds in the whole of Europe that are capable of thinking and judging is small, as it is; but when the audience is broken up and severed by differences of language, the good these minds can do is very much weakened. This is a great disadvantage; but a second and worse one will follow, namely, that the ancient languages will cease to be taught at all. The neglect of them is rapidly gaining ground in France and Germany.

If it should really come to this, then farewell, humanity! farewell, noble taste and high thinking! The age of barbarism will return, in spite of railways, telegraphs and balloons. We shall thus in the end lose one more advantage possessed by all our ancestors. For Latin is not only a key to the knowledge of Roman antiquity; it also directly opens up to us the Middle Age in every country in Europe, and modern times as well, down to about the year 1750.

The schism within the Catholic Church after the Vatican Second Council is a new topic of fascination for me.  It essentially created an internal divide between old-schoolers like Kunz and new-schoolers that resented the “elitism” of the old ways.  There are factions within the Church and not every Catholic priest is on the exact same page.  Kunz, for instance, was not particularly liked in progressive Madison.  The Latin Mass and his conservative views on homosexuality and abortion rubbed some people the wrong way.

A really imaginative fellow might see a connection between the schism and Alfred Kunz’s murder.  Enter Malachi Martin.  Martin is one hell of an interesting guy.  A little too interesting, one might say.  Martin was essentially a polymath and a friend of Kunz.  It seems as though the old-schoolers within the Catholic Church knew they had to stick together.

Malachi Martin was a real player within the Catholic Church.  He was summoned to work in Rome and even had contact with the Pope, himself.  He attended the Second Vatican Council and these reforms apparently disillusioned Martin.  The most interesting thing about Malachi Martin is that he requested and was relieved of his vows of poverty and obedience by the Church.  That’s a pretty rare thing.  With his new freedom, Martin emigrated to the US and wrote no less than 23 books, many of which subtly criticized the progressive shift in the Catholic Church.

There is one theory that Kunz, Martin, and several other priests of their ilk were in a good position to expose pedophiles within the Church.  To cut to the chase, there are some who believe that Alfred Kunz’s murder was something of an inside job to send a message to other traditional Catholic priests who may have known too much.  In any event, no matter what the ultimate plot is, when a small town Catholic priest in Wisconsin is murdered and it remains unsolved nearly 14 years later, it all points to one thing:  the battle of Good Vs. Evil rages on!

I can not and will not allow Wisconsin to forget this story.  Rest in Peace Father Kunz.

Symbol War

Postmodernism

One of the styles of modern and postmodern art is “collage” style.  Dada is the most obvious example of this.  I prefer traditional forms of art and storytelling, but a few thinkers and artists have managed to pull it off.  Jean Baudrillard, for instance, will, in a single book, write about a number of divergent topics to illustrate a single point:  art, religion, AIDS, cloning, watching TV, and even jogging, all in the same book.  William Burroughs also comes to mind, whose Naked Lunch was essentially written in a “cut-up” and “pasted-back-together” style.  Perhaps mentioning Quentin Tarantino and specifically Kill Bill will be the most illustrative and helpful.  Kill Bill is essentially a mash up of styles and influences from Shaw Brothers Kung-Fu flicks to Spaghetti Westerns.

It is in this collage style that I write the following piece.  It is admittedly scattered, but let him who hath understanding reckon the method to my madness.

Swanny the Sconnie

The Mission of Swanny the Sconnie is as follows:  to expose my writing to others, to celebrate Wisconsin and its lore, and to lead Wisconsin through dark times.  No one else is doing it and I know most of you don’t like our current Governor, anyway.  If there was an election today, who would you vote for:  Scott Walker or Swanny the Sconnie?  (I won’t just strip workers’ rights, I’ll strip bosses’ rights, too!)

I won’t ask for tributes or riches, just your respect, loyalty and trust.  We’ll do this Plato’s Republic style where the Guardians live very simple and meager material lives, but in exchange are afforded great authority and esteem.

Two types of writers/thinkers

1.  Those writers/thinkers who try to make sense of things and explain the world as it is.  As such they write about events.  They aim for clarity, and their art imitates life.

2.  Those writers/thinkers who attempt to create meaning.  Their writing is an event.  Explaining the world “accurately” is not their concern.  When they say life imitates art, these are the writers and thinkers that are being referred to.

With all of the preceding in mind, the following piece could be called a postmodern literary exorcism.  Clarity is not the goal.  The goal is to create meaning out of synchronistic events and divergent subjects. It is also a tribute to conspiracy theories and rambling websites such as truthism.com and timecube.com.

Now to the actual piece.

SYMBOL WAR

It has been said that man is the symbol making and symbol using animal.  Symbols are a shorthand to communicate meaning.  Some symbols have a very clear meaning, whereas other may be more mysterious or vague.

Keep in mind that symbols are not merely tangible signs.  They can also be things like sounds.  A siren is symbolic of the notion of danger, for instance, but it is not the danger itself.  To take it even further, forms of dancing can be symbolic of their respective milieu.  Ballroom dancing may conjure ideas of the Victorian era, break-dancing may conjure ideas from an urban, modern setting.

Thus, there is no such thing as just a symbol, as every symbol has a meaning it communicates even if the meaning is subtle on the one hand or obvious on the other.

Symbols push buttons deep in our subconscious.  Maybe one image or melody will soothe us, whereas another image or melody may arouse us.  Aesthetics can be delicate or they can be heavy-handed.

Symbols create different expectations and, therefore, standards within our mind.  As such, behavior can be manipulated by manipulating symbols.  As Plato says, “When the mode of music changes, the State changes.”

Laws don’t rule the world, money doesn’t rule the world, politicians don’t rule the world.  Symbols rule the world.

Magic

Consequences are everything.  As such, intent or exact cause is irrelevant as far as meaning is concerned.  This is why there are crimes like manslaughter.  “I didn’t mean to run over that old lady crossing the street” probably won’t hold up too well in court.  A siren signifies danger whether there is actually danger or not.

With this in mind, the intent of symbol-use does not change the meaning of the symbol.  In this sense symbols are charged with a sort of magical power.  Just as much as we control symbols, symbols also control us.

The iconic writer, Alan Moore knows that symbol-use is essentially magic.

Alan Moore is basically saying that magic amounts to manipulating language and manipulating symbols.

Television is sorcery.

There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room.  It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove.  It is as if another planet is communicating with you.

-Jean Baudrillard

Mythical Reality/Metaphorical Truth

I’ve read some wild articles about Madonna’s halftime show at the Super Bowl.  They basically amount to explaining the show as an occult ritual.

It was noted that Madonna referred to the half-time show at the Super Bowl as the “holiest of hollies.”  It is a curious phrase to choose.  But even if it was “just a saying” that came to Madonna’s mind, the phrase carries a connotation beyond simply meaning “a really big deal.”   Again, symbols and symbolic phrases carry with them meaning beyond what someone may or may have not intended.

Whether or not Madonna intended anything or did anything deliberately or not is irrelevant insofar as everybody tuned into the halftime show absorbed the images and sounds regardless.  It is hard to avoid an interpretation other than some variation or combination of cheap, sleazy, and decadent.  The bottom line is that the aesthetics were crass and heavy-handed.  It might as well be a tribute to Baphomet.

Pop music is Hell, television is sorcery, and Satan is an aging diva.

The Meaning of Life

Some people these days may say there is no real meaning to life.  God may not exist, they might say, everything is just an accident, so you might as well go out drinking and dancing with your friends, life is a lark, it’s a goof, it’s all just for fun – LOL, j/k, let’s text each other pictures of our private parts!

Beyond that, however, a more mature person will not settle for reckless hedonism.  Thus, they may say that the point of life is to help people, or have a career, or get married and have children, or go on vacations, or simply attain “happiness,” and that sort of thing.  These are all fine things, I wish them for everybody.  But is that enough?

Would you like to know the meaning of life?  I’ve thought about it for a long time, and it turns out it is as simple as all the stories of heroes and villains we read when we were young.  The meaning of life is to play your role in the cosmic battle of Good Vs. Evil.  That’s it.  To slay the dragon and rescue the princess.

The most fulfilling thing a man can do is to defend against evil, to keep evil at bay, to remain forever vigilant against evil.  Semper Vigilans.

Having a career and a family and being happy are part of fighting evil.  But we cannot get too comfortable.  We must remain forever watchful.

Nothing means anything?  On the contrary, everything means something.

The Fellowship of the Ring

It is important to remain humble and know that one must play their role in the battle of Good Vs. Evil.  You cannot defeat evil all by yourself.  As they say, discretion is the better part of valor.  Think of the Lord of the Rings.  Gandalf is the most powerful, but it is Frodo who is incorruptible and it is he who must be the Ring-Bearer.  Everyone in the fellowship plays their part.

Sauron is watching you!

With this in mind, I imagine Wisconsin to be like The Shire and fellow Sconnies like the Hobbits.  The humble and unassuming Midwesterners must rise to the occasion.

Minas Tirith is caught in between the Minas Morgul that is New York City in the east and the Orthanc that is LA in the west.

Eomer:  “Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?”

Aragorn:  “A man may do both.  For not we, but those who come after will make the legends of our time

-The Two Towers

Our Lady of Fatima

On May 13, 1917 three peasant children in Portugal saw a vision of the Virgin Mary.

Some people might laugh at this story or even roll their eyes.  But that is because they are only concerned with whether it actually occurred or not.  They don’t ask themselves the more interesting question which is:  what does it mean?  Can we imagine something like this happening these days?  If not, it is because meaning has become such a literal notion.

As the Jesuits say, there are two types of people in this world:  those who would defend the Virgin and those who would defile her!

Our thinking influences our actions, our actions influence the world and are, in essence, the sum of our life.  But what influences our thinking?  Symbols.  When we surround ourselves with base symbols, we become base people.  When we think of beautiful things and immerse ourselves in beauty, we become beautiful.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things. – Philippians 4:8

Yes, sons and daughters of Wisconsin, evil exists!  And only the pure of heart can keep it at bay.

The Unexplainable

All my life I have been fascinated with conspiracy theories, fringe culture, and the unexplainable.  As a kid in the 90s, I remember watching the series In Search Of on A&E and being profoundly influenced by it.  It’s hard to doubt anything that Leonard Nimoy says, no matter how fantastical.Believe it or not, the unexplainable is actually much more important than the explainable.  In parallel to my last piece about reading things you already agree with, the so-obvious-we-don’t-even-notice-it point must be made that the explainable has already been explained.  I am not trying to be patronizing.  I am convinced that people who scoff at the fantastical and unexplainable just don’t want to look bad in front of other people for maybe being wrong.

Furthermore, one note on the word conspiracy:  the word conspiracy means, simply, that more than one person is organizing a plan in secret.  By definition, the American Revolution was a conspiracy.

But there is a fundamental misunderstanding about conspiracies and the unexplainable, both by advocates and by skeptics.  It is a misunderstanding of metaphor.

Take a look at the wildly awesome website truthism.com (your #1 source for truth).  Truthism is all about the Reptilian Shapeshifter conspiracy.  It is one of the wildest websites out there and I want to know who in God’s name is behind it.  The point here is that although the person behind it is a maniac, they are also oddly intelligent.  Although it is mostly nonsense, there is a method to the madness, and there are some true metaphorical insights into human nature to be found at this site.

There is truth beyond literal truth, namely, metaphorical truth.  Maybe reptilian shapeshifters don’t actually control the entire earth.  However, no one will deny that there are evil and manipulative people out there.  Properly understood, the reptilian shapeshifter is just a vivid “shorthand” to talk about big-picture things.  Although, what’s funny is that the true-believers and the ultra-skeptics both misunderstand things on this same basis.

To take it one step further, someone might even say, well there is no such “thing” as evil, either; a person is just born with certain genetic predispositions.  Evil doesn’t actually “exist.”  I would say fine, but, again, the word evil is just a shorthand used for communication.  Whether or not a person has a genetic predisposition, is evil, or is a Reptilian Shapeshifter is, on some level, immaterial as far as consequences are concerned.  If a person commits a heinous act, the explanation of why he committed it does not change the heinous act.

Is a lightning bolt caused by Gods warring in the clouds?  Or is it caused by magnetism and positively and negatively charged particles in the air (or whatever the exact physical explanation is)?  In as far as the fact that the bolt of lightning will happen either way, it doesn’t even matter.  Does assigning one cause or the other produce a different outcome?  No.  The bolt of lightning occurs no matter what.

1000 years ago they thought Thor was fighting Giants in the clouds and that this is what caused lightning to come crashing out of the sky.  Today we know it is magnetism that causes lightning to come crashing out of the sky.  But in both cases, lightning comes crashing out of the sky.

Knowledge changes how we relate to reality, but it does not change reality.  There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as they say.  This is why I give conspiracy theorists and eccentric thinkers a pass.

The other reason I wrote this is because I found an old college paper that I wrote a few years ago.  It’s pretty funny and interesting.  I wrote it for my “Rhetoric of Religion” class and it’s about the only website that may be weirder than truthism.com.  It is the one and only TIMECUBE.COM.  Time cube is one man’s proposal on a new way to measure time instead of the 24 hour day.  My paper is a bit rough around the edges and somewhat repetitive (who the hell was proofreading this thing??), but I think it’s an interesting document that fits in with the topic of the unexplainable.

Time for a Norwegian Joke

I am Swedish, Norwegian and Polish if you can believe it.  It doesn’t get any more thick headed than that, but on the upside, I have a stockpile of good jokes from my uncles and my great uncles.  Here’s a classic:

Once upon a time, Sweden was at war against Norway.  A Swede got an idea and shouted a common Norwegian last name:

- Johansen!
A Norwegian stood up from the trench and said:
- That’s me!, and he got shot.

The Swede tried again and shouted another last name:
- Sigurdsen!
Another Norwegian stood up:
- That’s me!, and he got shot too.

A Norwegian soldier thought he should do the same so he shouted a common Swedish last name:
- Svensson!
A voice was heard from the Swedish army:
- Who’s asking?
The Norwegian stood up and said:
- That’s me!

What Makes Good Writing Good?

One of the worst clichés is that good writing needs to “relate” to the audience.  This is code for reading something that you already agree with; a sort of confirmation bias.  What makes good writing is not whether you agree with it or not.  In fact, to say you agree or disagree with something says as much about the person as it does the writing.  I’ve never understood the phenomenon of flatly disagreeing with something because it “just didn’t sit well.”

Think about how silly it is to only read things or try to understand things you already agree with.  It’s actually a paradox, because the only way we learn is by wading into uncharted territory.  If you already agree with it, there is really no reason to read it, is there.  Reading things we know we will like is like lifting weights but never increasing the weight.  The key to a lifetime of learning is overcoming.Good writing is like an adventure.  You don’t know what’s coming.  You might have to struggle and endure a little discomfort.  It could be dangerous and you might not like it at times.  But in the end, you slay the dragon, make off with some treasure, and bang a few fair maidens!

Good writing is based on writing about substantive things in idiosyncratic ways.  It’s actually about shedding new light on old things.  It makes something you’re all too familiar with seem alien once again; it’s discovery, mystery and maybe even terror.  If you feel repulsed after reading something, it may actually be a sign that it’s really good writing.  Some of the best authors I’ve come across were ones whose reputations did not sit well with me initially.

Good writing is more mesmerizing than it is agreeable.  After all, disagreement creates friction, friction creates energy, and as the great William Blake said, “Energy is eternal delight!”

Here’s my stab at a summary:  Good writing has to have content and the more content, the better; it cannot be style alone.  But that being said, judging good writing on whether or not you like or agree with the content is also a mistake.  Rather, the key is to judge how well the style matches the content, or makes the content come alive, or gives you a new perspective on the content.  That’s how I would define good writing.  What about you?

Finally, here is a link to the legendary writer, Italo Calvino’s short and sweet piece:  Why Read the Classics?  It will take you 2 minutes to read, so read that and tell me what you think!