As someone who likes to write essays for fun, I have been thinking recently about why. Often I will be hit with a thought that needs sense made of it, and I do believe that essays are one of the best ways to do it. They force me to structure my thoughts, to develop hypotheses and reach conclusions — or at least attempt to. Some of them I publish, a part of me hoping that they will be read, and many of them I don’t, mostly because they are… a little too honest, perhaps (much like this one might be). Or they’re just really shitty. It’s probably more the latter.
Recently I have been reading Zadie Smith’s ‘Feel Free’, a collection of essays spanning a decade. I did like some of them, although many of them were arbitrary. Aren’t most essays?
To give you the gist, in her quest to ‘feel free’, Smith speaks of attending dinner parties with North London intellectuals and laments the possibility of Brexit actually occurring. The lament occurs over wine and cheese. She discusses her personal meetings with major celebrities. She’s afraid that her white-passing children won’t want to connect with their heritage of black suffering. She has strong opinions on climate change. She’s sad that the local library is closing down — why won’t the local council protect libraries? She wants so much to reach out to a fellow parent at her son’s school who lives in council housing, but accepts that she never will. She can’t understand the “younger lefty generation” and their wishes for censorship and safe spaces, only to realise that she was once that self-righteous, too.
After reading all 33 essays (okay, I skimmed or skipped a few, such as her speculative essay about Justin Bieber meeting some philosopher that she likes which was not very profound) I came to a very sad realisation that essays can be like very long Facebook statuses. They are your thoughts and your opinions, aired out for everyone to see. The only thing missing is the ‘like’ button — unless you publish it on your blog and then onto your Facebook like I do, then your essay can be ‘liked’ I suppose. Ultimately they seem like an attempt to signal to others that you have some intelligent thoughts inside your head, or you have a nuanced opinion about something, or that you’re a ‘deep thinker’, or anything else in the same vein. Reading this book is like looking in a mirror and I’m really resenting the person looking back at this point. What I mean by this is that the persona that I encountered much of the time was one of arrogance and false humility. She likes a good name-drop, or an opportunity to flaunt her intellect with jargon-fuelled terminology, or references to classic literature and art, or quotes she has memorised from higher intellectual authorities.
Now I am faced with a dilemma. I am writing this essay about writing essays with the intention of publishing it — should I even do that? Do people even want to read them? What is my motive here? What am I trying to signal (consciously or subconsciously)? Do I want people to think that I have some deep thoughts about something? Probably. Do I also come across as arrogant or falsely humble? Yeah. Should I even be putting anything out there when I am certainly no authority on the issue? Debateable…
I tell myself that I write what I write to hopefully provoke thought — maybe even challenge and I think that’s genuine, but I don’t think that’s my pure motive. Maybe I actually just crave and love the attention and validation that comes with it. Is that wrong? When I consider the motives for why we, as humans, do anything at all, is there really such a thing as a pure motive? I’m beginning to think that there isn’t, and we all move throughout life trying to signal to others that we are virtuous, intellectual, empathetic, selfless, and the list goes on. I’m beginning to believe that we do this through the conversations we have and the questions we ask, through our interests, through the friendships we make, through the job we have, through our beliefs, opinions and ideology, through everything. The guy who preaches about hating Capitalism ‘tweets’ his opinions from his iPhone and the girl who gives up her seat to someone older than her on the train just received silent approval from onlookers, and don’t tell me that she didn’t — deep-down or not — love the affirmation. The question I have to ask myself now is whether or not it is possible to do anything at all without signalling in some way?
Since I’m calling this an essay (albeit a very poorly written one, let’s be real), it needs a conclusion. However, I don’t believe there is one for this subject. Where do I go from here? In terms of writing essays, I mean (or in terms of doing anything). Well, I suppose I’ll just keep writing them and publishing them, in the hopes that I’m signalling something good. I’m probably not. I don’t really know. I’m confused now. Do you think that being a little more honest and self-aware is a step in the right direction? To be frank, consciously processing every action that I want to enact is going to get quite exhausting. Have I over-complicated something that really should have been left alone? I don’t want to believe that. I do want to move through my life honestly, though, and be aware of why I do what I do, and that definitely extends to why I publish what I publish online.
Okay, that will do for this spiel. Can you please give this a thumbs up and comment any signals you received.
PS. I can’t pretend that this idea of ‘signalling’ just popped into my mind one day while I was staring at the clouds. I was listening to a podcast about a book called The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life (just referencing incase you want to find out more about this idea, okay!) for like, 25 minutes and had heard quite enough to know that I have some kinks to smooth out, just like you do.
