World Against Man, Man Against World
"There she goes, my beautiful world / There she goes, my beautiful world / There she goes, my beautiful world /There she goes again"
I am told the start of the second act is the point at which to detail my measured plan to consistently deliver into your welcoming inboxes a steady flow of writing; the place to provide a concrete statement on exactly what this newsletter will contain and how and when it will go about doing so. Reader, I leave you in an unfulfilled state by being unable to provide you with such plans. We travel together down an unmapped stream.
I have not created this Substack because I finalized a concept for a perfectly stylized newsletter (for it would never begin) but instead because I believe this to be a place I can most adequately collect and share my ideas. In this, I don’t have an aim other than to produce work and writing of quality that is of interest to me and may be of interest to you. If I mean to say anything in particular then I opt to take the long way round in doing so. I hope to soon form a better idea of the governing logistics but for now I want to stop planning and start writing. For now you can expect something from me every week (likely on Friday’s), unless of course I haven’t found anything worthwhile to send. With hope, the former circumstance will outweigh the latter.
Today’s letter revolves around the notion of sincerity in regard to both the individual self and the collective society. I begin this discussion with two premises: first, that we live in an increasingly insincere world, and second, we have been unwittingly forced to harbour the newfound insincerity of world within ourselves. This is the relationship from which the title of ‘World Against Man, Man Against World’ is meant to derive. The letter is organized like this: I will first apply the idea of embattled sincerity to writing, as told through my own history of wanting to be a writer but being encouraged to write insincerely. Second, I will present a short (emphasis on short) story with commentary called 250—1 to help elucidate—almost in the form of a case study—this argued insincerity of the modern age. Finally, I consider what it means—and what it sounds like—to be sincere in a world that is not.
Why Bad Writing Is Good or At Least Honourable
Bad writing is something I know a great deal about. A brief personal history on the topic: I have wanted to be a writer for a long time but my desire to be a writer was always matched with a doubt that I would never be able to be a writer. I thought that even if to write I would simply never be good enough. This was a sure outcome that I felt rendered the entire pursuit futile. As an individual wanting to write in effort to produce not just writing but writing of quality, the fear of not being good enough was a barrier I even took as honourable to the craft. It isn’t. I used to think that writing badly was worse than not writing at all. It’s not.
But I didn’t know these things yet. I decided I would rather not be a writer than to be a bad writer. This decision’s primary effect was an attitude of hesitancy around any kind of writing at all, which in turn prevented me from putting more than a couple bullet points together in the misguided hope that one day it would somehow come together later (which, in turn, impeded me from ever being able to improve as a writer). This cyclical desire (the stance of equal wanting and not wanting) resulted in coming up with the title of ‘aspiring writer’.
I hid behind this newfound ‘identity’ for some time—it was the only thing I was sure of adding in my Twitter bio. It felt safe, akin to finding a cheat-code; for, an aspiring writer never has to write but can still call themselves, in some honesty, a writer. I was not soon enough taught an important lesson by mentor Thomas J. Bevan: that there was no such thing as an aspiring writer. You are either a writer or you are not. There is such thing as a bad writer, such thing as a good writer, maybe even such thing as a great writer. But, crucially, there is no such thing as an aspiring writer. You can aspire to be better, but you cannot aspire to be at all. To be an aspiring writer is to be in writing limbo. And the thing about limbo it that it isn’t anything, which under many interpretations is worse than any result at all.
Let us return to sincerity like this: to claim to be an ‘aspiring writer’ is to be insincere. To claim to be an aspiring writer is to try to be something one cannot ever really be. Instead, to be sincere in writing is to willingly accept the likely reality that for some time (and maybe all time) you will not be a good writer. Such an acceptance is a truer homage to the craft of writing, not to mention the self, than to never attempt at all. This is what sincerity is: the function of being true to something.
If you try something, you do that thing honour by trying. If you try and fall short, you do that thing you tried all the more honour by proving it as something difficult to attain. If you never try at all, you indicate that what you shy from doing is not worth the effort it would to accomplishing it. When you fail to succeed at something you genuinely attempt, you are saying, ‘damn, this is really hard.’ You are saying to the Form of Writing that it is very elusive and powerful, and for that, the hard thing and those who are good at that hard thing are glorified. If you don’t try at all, you indicate it is not worth being good at that you wouldn’t risk being bad at it. When it comes to writing; bad writing—as long as it is sincere—is at least writing, which is more that can be said of any writing that lacks sincerity.
In Sin(cerity)
I some ways, I take the pursuit of good writing as a recovery of being sincere. If I gained an increased means to express myself during university, then I did not learn how to do so honestly. University, through the desire for high grades destroyed my writing (and rarely achieved such high grades) in causing or at least encouraging me to lie. In most of my papers I neither believed a word I said nor in the stuffed format in which I said them. I recall a Tweet to this effect (I could not find the source) that goes something like this, “We have two lives and the second begin when you learn that lying gets you better grades.” How I interpret this line is: we learn that we can benefit in this insincere environment by becoming insincere ourselves. We don’t.
But I did not know this yet. I made the following observation during my second year of university: “University is the practice of teaching your thoughts to behave.” In a rare and fleeting moment of lucidity, I felt the pressing effect of the ‘university’ on my own self, though wrongly interpreted this top-down insincerity as something positive. Well, some behaving may be desirable if you wish to make any sense but there is a marked difference between behaving and beheading. To that point in time I had never been rewarded for writing what I believed to be true. I was never rewarded nor praised for being sincere (but stylistically flawed) and took this to mean that my sincerity was the problem. I was told as much as Freddery above. So I wrote as someone else, and worse, relished in it: I felt I would rather fail as someone else than fall short than as myself. I could tell myself, if needed, “Well, that the person that wrote that wasn’t me.” What can be more insincere than that? And this was not something I learned to on my own.
As we have established, to write well you must accept writing poorly. But to even qualify as writing at all you must be sincere. If you write with sincerity, then you truly write. You write, albeit badly, perhaps, but you are on track to the good, and maybe even the great. Speaking in slogans, maxims, and mannerisms are the middle ground of communicating, and one merely regurgitates rather than writes through their use. A ‘regurgitator’ may sound alright but will never amount to more than that; they have no means by which to improve except to find more words to repeat and ideas to mimic. In conclusion, sincerity is not necessarily good writing but it is the only writing that might eventually be good, and is good, or at least honourable, in this way.
When a merely honest man appears he is a comet—his fame is eternal, needs no genius, no talent—mere honesty.
Mark Twain
250—1: A Short Story on our Age
A man owns a phone with the storage capacity for 250 photos.
In effort to reduce energy output, the company he works for has the electronic check-in system taken away. Instead of reverting to the old methods of ink and paper (think about the forests and trees, please!), it is decided to make use of the universal access of technology. With this in mind, it is announced that employees are to be responsible for ensuring their own attendance through use of their own devices in the following way: If an employee’s attendance at work is ever in question, ever doubted, ever randomly checked, ever wondered about, the employee is promptly notified of their obligation to send proof of their attendance on the day in question in the form of a personal photo taken upon their entrance to the office. Such submission must be made by the end of the next business day (no time for funny business, please!). The metadata of the submitted photo is cross-checked to verify legitimacy and after some additional time for review (we must be thorough, please!) any contest is cleared. The photo is in all cases is necessary; in opposition to popular rumour: a witness report is not sufficient (the fallibility of our memories, please!).
A man needs to take a photo of himself entering work every day.
Partially on account of the natural delays associated with the above process and partially on account of the assurance of a complete record, one must be able to prove attendance to any workday within a calendar year. This procedure is not a superficial one: two unexplained absences (or unproved presences, remember!) mean automatic probation, three, and you are out the door, without any further need for taking photos (but keep a copy of photos within the last year, please, we could still investigate other days!).
A man is not able to take, nor possess, any additional photos on his phone.
Money is tight and jobs are scarce. The man develops a system to manage the imposed constraints — that for every photo he takes upon entering the office on any given day he deletes the photo from exactly the year previous. The deleted photo dances off into a virtual oblivion. He looked younger then.
A man has a daughter. His wife holds her for the first time, beaming in relief, beaming in their newfound collective beauty. “Take a picture of your daughter, would you?”
He sighs. “I can’t.”
What a Man Needs
The stated premise of this essay is that the world is less sincere than it used to be. 250—1 is riddled with insincerity. The company wants to save money, they want to cut costs, they want you to be at work more, they want to make sure they don’t pay anyone who isn’t at work. All the reasons given in brackets are not actually reasons. The story is best read and understood to the sentiment of the below, Neil Young’s, ‘A Man Needs a Maid’:
I don’t think 250—1 is very good story but I wanted to write it to help form my overall point and to capture the essence of the concluding line. I added some bureaucracy, unexplained policy, 4HL culture, useless repetition, and virtue signalling to a simple idea: “A man can’t take a picture of his newborn daughter because his storage his full.” I came up with a reason for why his storage was full, and moreover, couldn’t be cleared—in theory. 250-1 is indicative to the effects of the overpowering of the self by insincere external forces in the modern world.
This story is party based on a recent personal experience. While on a recent trip, I came across a spectacular view I wanted to take a photo of: a sun-washed church bell-tower rising over tiled homes. A pure blue sky, pink flowers dancing in the wind, an old lantern, a well-tended tree, that sort of thing. I usually take photos to activate memory, and to paradoxically allow me to be secure in the present, but on this occasion my iPhone rejected this wish.
[Cannot Take Photo. There is not enough available storage to take a photo.]
Huh? It was a what-the-fuck moment. When I was a kid and we were going on a trip, my dad used to buy me a click and shoot camera that had the ability to take 26 photos. At the end of 26 photos, the fun was over, though in a very expectant way. My iPhone? There is nothing on my iPhone, important that is, and it is certainly not other photos that are in the way. So why is there no space? Is the 15GB of ‘system use’ any less arbitrary bullshit than the scenario given in 250—1? Twitter? Snapchat? Get rid of them. Files and data from bet365? I don’t even want to see those.
We are struggling to prioritize what is important and this is not the result of only our doing. For, in many ways, this struggle is being unwittingly imposed on us. My phone, using a foreign measuring system — remind me again how many megabytes the memory of my high school graduation is — decided it was full, not me. I can understand not being able to take a 27th photo on a 26-photo click and shoot camera, but I have a harder time understanding how a 64GB device can refuse to take just one picture. Our devices are deciding how to occupy their own space on our behalf, a relation that seeps over to the space in our minds. If your phone is full, likely your mind is also. To be full of meaninglessness is to be empty of all meaning and without opportunity for meaning to enter. Our struggle is of a fullness rather than an emptiness.
What strikes me most in A Man Needs a Maid is Neil Young’s wailing desperation. Each chord is a small wish, and the whole song together is a grand one. A Man Needs a Maid. A man needs to take a picture of his daughter. A man needs to be in charge of himself. Some would say to just enjoy the moment but the point remains that if you have a picture of anything, if you use your storage for anything, it should be of your newborn daughter and by your own choice. This is the central point of the post today—what space does insincerity occupy in your lives, and what is prevented from entering your life by it? The ability to write well, for one? The ability to take a picture of your daughter? The ability to be in charge of your own mind?
Some questions remain. If sincerity is authenticity towards our surroundings and our surroundings are insincere, how can we ourselves (practically, not morally) be sincere? If the writing we are encouraged to do is dishonest, and dishonest writing is not writing, how can we write well? We have every reason in life to be insincere. Every reason, except the only important one: it makes us miserable by pitting our souls against our minds. Our subconscious can’t make sense out of what doesn’t make sense.
While difficult, we must carve back out our own space of sincerity that functions independent of the world and focus on being true to ourselves. If you accept bullshit you will soon start propagating it as well. I understand the following Tom Waits quote through this lens. If we properly understand and conceptualize our suffering, or at least honestly mean to, that suffering might be more worthwhile. A man needs to be sincere and live sincerely. Writing is hard enough already, life is hard enough already,
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.
Tom Waits
The second part of the Waits quote is, “It cheapens and degrades the human experience, when it should inspire and elevate.” I think what Waits means by bad writing is the same we do: insincere writing. He means writing that is dishonest, filled up space. I also think he means insincerity in every way of life. It okay to write from uncertainty, and it is okay—it is indeed honourable—for writing to be bad, as long as it is sincere. I don’t know about truth but I know about sincerity. And the nice thing about sincerity is that something need not to be necessarily true to be sincere. But one must write, and live, and write, sincerely. Being sincere may be the only way to remain yourself.
We will talk more about sincerity in the future, but I’ll leave the discussion here for now: If we aren’t able to be sincere about our lives and our society, we can’t improve them—we can hardly even be properly aware of them. We end up with full hard drives, filled up not by us, for reasons we are incapable of understanding. We do feel the effects of the overload, however. So, join me, write sincerely. Write badly, but write as yourself. And doubt, but doubt as yourself. (I highly recommend Thomas W. Gardner’s essay on this topic ‘On The Virtue of Doubt’). I have accepted being bad so that I might get better.
This was an absolute joy to read and a timely reminder for any writer. Sincerity is indeed the essence of mindful living. I’ve often pondered on the similarities and differences between authenticity and sincerity. I believe the former still holds on to the notion of an “ideal” self which goes against of what being sincere is about - embracing both perfections and imperfections with equanimity.
Enjoyed it! I've been thinking and reading about doubts and sincerity in writing a lot and this essay is a great addition to the discussion (I liked the nested story as well!)