Writing is NOT "Doing Nothing"
Please understand the nature of the conflict we are in. Writing matters, and wordsmiths are essential warriors in the fight against tyranny.
Sometimes I see it expressed that writers are nothing but “keyboard warriors”.
The sentiment goes something like: there are real people out there, doing the real work of fighting tyranny, like running in elections, and fighting court battles, and organizing protests.
Writers, by contrast, are not real people doing real work. They’re just waxing poetic to the great nether, spitting out word salad for their own egoic gratification, safely ensconced in electronic anonymity, probably in their pajamas. The sum effect of which, to the world, is precisely nothing.
Writing makes no difference, according to this view. It’s easy, fruitless, pointless, masturbatory, cowardly.
All talk, no walk.
These sentiments, I have to say, are usually to be found in various comments sections, not penned by creators themselves. Which should tell you something. And they often manifest as a word salad of unorganized thoughts, safely ensconced in electronic anonymity. Funny, that.
Because the people out there actually creating, actually committing themselves to the craft of wordsmithy, and pushing their creations out into the world in the hopes they can, if not fly, perhaps walk, or stumble (or in the very least not fall straight onto their faces) know that writing is the furthest thing from doing nothing.
Consider…
1. Writing is a staggering act of courage.
Writing is a decision to not only to reveal one’s thoughts (already an act of vulnerability) but to commit them to the permanent public record.
This has always been an act of supreme courage.
Consider how badly this could turn out for the writer if someone in power (or simply an enemy the writer doesn’t even know exists) doesn’t like what the writer entered into the permanent record.
If you don’t think this is a courageous act, I would beg you to read the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or talk to Salman Rushdie for five minutes. Did you know that the organization PEN International is monitoring over 700 cases worldwide of people imprisoned for no other reason than the sin of writing something? For thoughtcrimes.
Consider the safe, happy , comfortable lives these people exchanged for expressing the truth as they saw it.
If that’s not the very definition of courage, I don’t know what is.
2. The nature of the conflict we finds ourselves in.
If you think writers are just keyboard warriors, you are fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the battle we’re in.
Bringing your body to a battle of ideas is bringing a knife to gunfight.
We are in a war for your mind.
Please hear this, and absorb it.
We are in a war for your mind.
The enemy combatants have figured out that if they come at us with the outward trappings of tyranny such as tanks and swastikas and jackboots and heiling salutes, the people will resist.
So, in a devilishly clever move, they’re instead coming with TV commercials and trusted news anchors and “fact checkers” and white coats and friendly smiles.
Don’t worry, you’re safe now. We’re from GovMediaCorp and we’re here to protect you. Don’t listen to the dissidents, they’re just conspiracy theorists and terrorists. We’re your REAL friends.
They will not march you into camps. That would create resistance. They want your unconscious assent. They’ve figured out that you will do the police work for them, by dismissing the critical thinkers in your family or workplace as “crazy”.
We are living in the Allegory of the Cave.
If you don’t see that yet, you are one of the cave’s prisoners.
And if this is the nature of the conflict, then the frontline warriors are the critical thinkers. The ones who can see through the bullshit and lead everyone out of the cave into the light.
The writers and thinkers you think are “doing nothing” are the ones hard at work dismantling the propaganda apparatus and desperately calling anyone who will listen toward the cave exit before it’s too late.
3. If we are at mental war, writers are also the munitions suppliers.
Let me ask you this: what do you think all those “real” warriors running in elections, fighting court battles, and organizing protests show up with as their ammunition?
Why words, of course.
They either show up having written something first, or having read something written by someone else, which gave them the impetus to show up.
And not just words, but words organized into coherency, which is what writing is.
Showing up to a court battle or an election or a protest without the written word is like showing up to a trench battle with spitballs and rude hand gestures.
Writing is thoughtcraft. In a war for the mind, writers are the people making the tanks and bombs and ammunition. Convince me that’s not important.
4. Writing performs an immensely valuable public service: it keeps people from going insane.
Writing is telepathy. It’s connecting my mind to yours, without us being in the same physical space, or even in the same time.
This is a miracle.
Consider the enormous boon to your life that this is: knowing that even if you’re alone in a room, or “alone” in a group of peers or family, you are not alone in your thoughts.
Does keeping people from going batshit insane in a solipsistic hellscape of their own thoughts sound like an important public service to you? Because it does to me.
I like it when there are less insane people around, not more.
Of course, yes, there is a selfish reason behind this: the writers themselves are staving off insanity, broadcasting their thoughts into the dark in order to hear a blip of response from the outside.
We need to know that others have the thoughts we have. We need to know we are not living alone in an inescapable cave filled with irrational demons.
5. Writing is the opposite of staying silent.
To the degree that tyranny is with us is the degree that we should have said something sooner but didn’t.
Many people who had a voice were silent when they shouldn’t have been.
I include myself in that.
There is guilt in it. There is shame.
Look what we let happen to the world.
If you have a keyboard and a voice and talent for making your thoughts known, please, please, do not stay silent. The world needs you.
6. Writing is sacrifice.
Aside from a very few superstars, no one is fully supporting themselves with writing.
This isn’t a complaint. We all make our choices. I could have been an investment banker. I chose this instead.
In addition to income, most writers are sacrificing other things, too (e.g., time with friends or spouses or family) because we feel we have to. The work is too important. And anything that requires you sacrifice pleasures and comfort in order to put something into the world is WORK, I don’t care what you say.
Writers are often riddled with doubt. They are human, which means they’re subject to all the forces pulling on them (income pressures, family, physical necessities, procrastination) which are telling them to NOT write.
That anyone ever sees a piece of writing to its conclusion and hits “publish” is a miracle. Everything around us is telling us to do something else.
To my fellow wordsmiths: your work matters. A lot.
Please, please keep pounding the keyboard, keep working your craft, and keep hitting “publish”.
Your sacrifices are appreciated. You are winning hearts and minds. And given what the tyrants have in store for us, we’re gonna need all the hearts and minds we can get.
To anyone else: convince me that’s not important.
Oh, and do it without words.
I’m waiting.
Strong words, comrade. Writing is the best way to counter the cultural revolution. Let one thousand substacks bloom! https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/counter-the-cultural-revolution
If it werent for what i read on substack i would be completely hopeless. The writing the group of MFM puts out is as important as anything else anyone is doing. Lawsuits and writing is all we have right now.