We reached 1000 posts yesterday.
That is almost 1.3 million words, enough for at least 10 books or so.
It’s been a wonderful experience. Writing makes ideas clearer than reading ever could.
My One Hope
My one hope is that some of you have been motivated to live a fuller life, that is focused on God, love, adventure, intellect, poetry, tradition, and so on. Anything but the deadening effects of consumer society and the destructive and ugly positivist philosophy.
I was at a virtual social event recently, during which one fellow told me his problem: when you have so many subscription services, you have to spend a lot of time deciding what to watch next.
I can assure you that when you are in hospice care, struggling to breathe as your organs fail one by one, or during a sudden death when your life flashes before your eyes, you will not be thinking: “I wish I had watched more TV in my life.” Or, “Doc, please save me, there is a new series on Netflix that I want to watch.”
Don’t squander your human incarnation with trivialities.
Writing Style
A basic readability analysis of the posts seems to show that they are written for the 3rd to 10th grade level. Those numbers, however, are based on the number and the length of words, not on the content of the posts.
This was done deliberately, since complex ideas should be expressed in language as simply as possible, although not simpler. The inability to do so may mask misunderstanding, or it may be used to impress the “professionals”; but erudition is not intellectual knowledge.
Not surprisingly, documents written by lawyers, politicians, or bureaucrats have poor readability numbers. Obviously, that is not because the concepts are so difficult to understand. Rather, it demonstrates an inability to make ideas clear.
The translations also have poor readability numbers. That is because it was the custom of that time to write like university professors, or else a writer would not be taken seriously.
In this regard, Schopenhauer, who always wrote lucidly, is our guide for writing about metaphysics.
Idea Density
The best measure for intellectual content is Idea Density. Unfortunately, computer algorithms cannot pick out the number of ideas. The expression of more ideas in the fewest words is the goal; the alternative is just rambling. In practice, this requires simplifying grammar and choosing the more expressive vocabulary word over the more general.
Printing Style
The technology of printing limits style. Rock carvings are simple. Even papyrus documents have limitations and sentences were jammed together without punctuation. Much of what is considered good punctuation is due to restrictions of typesetters.
In electronic delivery, we can used ordered and unordered lists, section headers, tables, and so on, to make ideas clear. Space is not an issue and software will take care of layout changes. Many limit themselves to what typewriters could do.
Organization
Some comments have point out that the site needs better topical organization. That sounds like a good task. I will try to create a topical table of contents. I am certainly open to suggestions.
Thank you
Thanks to all the supporters who have been reading this, writing to me, offering corrections to grammar and facts. It requires a much higher than average intelligence to understand it. Even where you think I am wrong, it still takes intelligence to pinpoint objections.
Charles Peguy had an odd list of three philosophical influences. Junger listed three seemingly incompatible saints. I listed three influences, but they are deeply buried.
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