However objective you may wish to be as a writer, there will always be a lens through which you perceive and colour the world. Your writing will reveal shades of your cultural identity, political affiliations, moral compass and “education”, for example.
The word “education” is an interesting one. From the Latin “educo” (I raise up), and an even more archaic version “e(x)duco”, the real sense of education is a process whereby one is “led out of” (ignorance?), hence “shaped”. However, it also has the connotation of “leading away” – which is the aspect I wish to examine.
An “educated” individual will always see the world via the filter of his or her specialisation. Even when thinking about something, our thoughts are clouded by the language with which we are accustomed to associate. When we read the news, we subconsciously choose to read the articles whose headlines proclaim our world view and gloss over those which don’t reinforce our gradually accreted belief system.
On an even more subtle level, one assumes an artifice as a writer. French philosopher Michel Foucault puts it succinctly:
“As soon as you start writing, even if it is under your real name, you start to function as somebody slightly different, as a ‘writer’. You establish from yourself to yourself continuities and a level of coherence which is not quite the same as your real life… All this ends up constituting a kind of neo-identity which is not identical to your identity as a citizen or your social identity. Besides you know this very well, since you want to protect your private life.”
My little vice is writing in a Victorian style. A bit pedantic for the Digital Age maybe. Perhaps I’m a romantic. Nostalgic, certainly. Style aside, let’s constantly guard againt becoming victims of our own potential dogmatism. Let’s celebrate the multi-faceted nature of “truth”and keep in mind that consensual reality is merely an unwritten societal arrangement for order and civility. And being a “writer” is the right of everyone, irrespective of background or so called “education”.
