Hi, Penny

I have been meaning to write to you about the mess you made out of the "get real in Toronto" piece. I have been busy and distracted by other things. I have had to think about what to say. Now I have thought enough about it, I think it is almost worth an article itself. It will form the core of a set of terms for using my work, which I will add to my web page and blog.

The terms will be this; run my stuff exactly the way I write it or pass it by. If you can point out spelling, grammatical, or logic errors, I want to know about them. But I do not think I make many of them any more. I do not want my name attached to something I do not agree with.

And I never, ever, want to be described as a 'freelance' or any other type of 'journalist.' I will herein get philosophical about why this is.

Why I write as I do

I am one more life long invalid who never got a proper diagnosis until many years too late. There are a lot of us. I started writing because it was easier to express myself that way than orally. I like writing.

However, when I started trying to get some of it ciculated, I kept encountering strenuous criticism of a kind that made no sense to me. This destroyed my confidence in my ability for a long while.

Later I had the chance to get some 'higher education'. Because I did not care about getting a degree, I could get a better education. I took an effective writing course from a very good professor. Among the things he expounded upon was the destructive effect 'journalism' has had on language. It was heaven to have my writing critiqued by someone not locked into a journalistic or academic 'standard English' mentality.

I read George Orwell. I also read Samuel Johnson, who said "only a block head ever wrote, other than for money".

However, I did not accept everything this professor said because I encountered some other amazing professors. One was able to explain to me why so many people are so dramatically offended by my writing but unable to coherently say why. I will say why below.

Why write what no one will read? I am starting to write my way at this time because I have come into a little money and I can create a web site, and because "blogs" now exist. However, I do not think electronic media will replace print any time soon. I have a dilemma; for now I will solve it by writing as for print. Those who 'scan' the net are the majority of net users but not the people I really want to reach. And, a 'street newspaper' is publishing much of my stuff.

Some philosophy about language.

Language controls the way people think. So, the way people think is controlled by controlling language. English and the other 'indo-european' languages are considered to be highly 'linear'. They force people into a straight line mode of thinking that does not reflect reality, which is a 'web of causation'.

People in western civilisations are further impaired by the 'Aristotelean tradition'. People absorb this " 'is' of identity", meaning; 'this is this, this is only this, there is only one right way to use this, there is one right way to say this,' and so on.

People usually think in a very 'intensional' way, meaning, they try to impose their preconceived 'is'es onto everything. I never had this hammered into me and so I think in a more 'extensional' way. This means I see the causes and connections of things better. This means I tend to disturb people who are impaired by socialisation and education to a linear/intensional mode of thinking.

So, I found the professor who taught these concepts to be a fresh breeze. He advocated almost every literary device that 'standard English' types denounce, as a way of increasing the capacity of language to accurately model what it is describing. These include brackets, colons, dashes, the 'etc', and even the awful 'passive voice'.

What I want to do

I want to develop my thinking ability by practising thinking and writing in a non-Aristotelean way. I do not mean, to blather on in an undisciplined way. I wish I had someone who shares my aims about language and thought; we could help each other improve. But I do not, and I do not want some 'editor' type trying to impose 'dumbed down' standard language on me, which means dumbed down thinking.

George Orwell in his time and, I think, Noam Chomsky in ours understood the way standardised language is used to regulate the way people think; to make it impossible to express certain ideas, or to think in certain ways.

Orwell also said; "If freedom of speech means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear". I intend to tell people what most of them do not want to hear.

This is, what I would call 'species issues'. They come from some of my professors, and my own reading and thinking, and some acquaintances of mine with similar life experiences and views.

Even Albert Einstein said that if the human species does not learn to think in a different way, it will not survive. I find that a lot of thoughtful people, coming at it from many directions, have similar ideas about what is wrong with the way people think, and what these 'different ways' of thinking might be.

I am going to be juggling with the really subversive ideas that get lots of people really upset. I really do not want to hear hysterical attacks dressed as 'correction'. It is really important to me not to have my stuff edited so that the real point is lost. I want to reach people who are at least willing to 'try on' these ideas.

No compromises.

What I have realised out of my experience with the 'Get real' piece is that I do not want to compromise to get something published. My meaning is lost and I get things attributed to me that I do not support.

I am a block head. I am not getting paid to write this stuff. When you want to pay me money you can commission me to write about whatever you want in any way you want. Only do not put my name to it.

I know a lot of 'free lancers' are clamouring to get their work published on all sorts of print and web publications like yours. They are prepared to compromise endlessly in order to become 'writers'. But in order to write anything worth while you have to have something to say. You have to be a thinker first. As soon as you start thinking about what will be 'acceptable' instead of how to describe accurately what is going on, you and your work start to be dumbed down.

This is why the best 'what is going on' writing is starting to come from blogs and small, independent web sites with no pretences to 'journalism', and no need to make money. I predict that even print media will eventually have to borrow from this 'unstandardized' thought/communication.

Unintelligent node.

'Tim Rourke' says 'make 'drugs' legal and tax them?' That is the dumbest idea I have read all morning. Who is this guy, some relation to Penny Kome?

You might legalise and 'tax the hell out' of that ole 'wacky tobbacky'. You never want to legalise the needle drugs. Their effects are far more serious than 'social' drugs like alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis. Alcohol can engender antisocial behaviour as bad as that from crack cocaine, but it is not injected. It does not create those health problems. There are no 'social' uses for needle drugs; you cannot use them in moderation.

Trafficking in needle drugs should remain illegal. But the market for them can be sharply shrunk, their destructive effects limited, by dealing with the addiction as a medical problem. Dispense to the addicts their prescribed daily fix, which they shoot or smoke at the clinic. Be ready to assist them when they are ready to get off the addiction, but do not force them, do not judge them.

And what was this 'Fiddy cent' thing about? The name is Curtis ( Fifty cent) Jackson. It was not the aim of the story to glamorise him, or to pretend the kind of approval and affection the 'fiddy cent' nickname implies.

You could have done worse than call me a 'freelance journalist'. I could have been declared an 'activist' or worse, an 'antipoverty activist'.

The root causes of addictions, the fallacies of 'activism', and the prospects for species survival are topics for many future pieces. Internet ' intelligent filtering nodes' such as 'Straight goods' are free to disseminate them, or to leave them alone.

TR