The Right to Be Bewildered

For far too long now, I’ve kept myself from writing anything of any real controversy or value.  Whether in terms of philosophy, politics, poetry or other commentary, I have often felt the urge to say something, only to later “think better” of it.  The primary reason for this is simple: before I put pen to paper, I can already see the flaws, the shortcomings, and the missing pieces of my own arguments.  Try as I might to reduce the idea to something which makes sense, I instead only manage to find an irreducible and, by definition, unanswerable question.  And so I remain silent. 

Yet, everywhere I look others are spouting ideas.  Many of these are good ones, in spite of their flaws, though others I find so awful to be nearly inexcusable.  Whether their authors notice their flaws or not I am uncertain—if they do, it’s a hindrance they clearly surmount in favor of expressing an imperfect, yet useful idea.  If they don’t, it’s usually due to an ignorance which is more than apparent in the resulting manuscript. 

Even now, I hesitate to have written the previous sentence—not necessarily because I think it untrue, but rather that it seems to suggest I am not ignorant.  Try as I might, I must submit that there are much more things I am unaware of than I am aware of, and this is a fact which will remain true so long as I am alive.

But with that said, I believe now that at the very least I must participate.  If the greatest philosophers and polymaths, both ancient and contemporary, could make mistakes at an epic scale, surely I can reserve the right to be wrong or bewildered.  My writings are not a fount of truth—rather, they are true only insofar as they represent how I truly understand and relate to the world.

The contents of this website, then, will reflect my attempts to allay my own bewilderment, and perhaps in the process I will help someone else do the same.  I invite my readers to participate with me as well—in the spirit of dialogue, in the spirit of learning, and in the spirit of wrongness—with the hope that it will one day lead us to something right.

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