Tag: Arendt

Writing Seeking Understanding

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I’ve read a few book prefaces recently that have quoted Toni Morrison’s inspiring advice: “If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

It seems to me that one barrier to writers’ practice of this good advice is a concern that they lack the expertise to write the book they want to see in the world.

In his Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman helpfully writes:

It’s alarming to face the prospect that you might never truly feel as though you know what you’re doing, in work, marriage, parenting, or anything else. But it’s liberating, too, because it removes a central reason for feeling self-conscious or inhibited about your performance in those domains in the present moment: if the feeling of total authority is never going to arrive, you might as well not wait any longer to give such activities your all—to put bold plans into practice, to stop erring on the side of caution. It is even more liberating to reflect that everyone else is in the same boat, whether they’re aware of it or not.

So why not start writing that book, or song, or painting that piece you can all but already see? Why not tackle that project that feels ambitious because it is, but also feels ambitious because our standards for it are unreasonably high?

Hannah Arendt offered a useful way for writers to think of themselves. In her 1964 interview with Günter Gaus, in response to his question about her desire to “achieve extensive influence” through her work, she responds:

What is important for me is to understand. For me, writing is a matter of seeking this understanding, part of the process of understanding…. What is important to me is the thought process itself. As long as I have succeeded in thinking something through, I am personally quite satisfied. If I then succeed in expressing my thought process adequately in writing, that satisfies me also.

She goes on:

Do I imagine myself being influential? No. I want to understand. And if others understand—in the same sense that I have understood—that gives me a sense of satisfaction, like feeling at home.

Writing as an ongoing “process of understanding” helps relieve some of the pressure of it, and it helps keep writers—and creators of other kinds—humble. Writers are “questing,” as a writing coach once told me. Good writers invite readers to come along with them and learn together.

Now Reading: Hannah Arendt

I am feeling compelled to finally read The Origins of Totalitarianism, the 1951 work of Jewish political philosopher Hannah Arendt. In it she explores Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. She wants to come to some kind of understanding—should it be possible—of horrific evil, and of how totalitarian regimes can come to be in the first place.

In the words of an acquaintance, my strong desire to read Arendt feels both “ominous and important.” Am I reading it in preparation for the 2024 presidential election and all that may follow? I hope not—but I will anyway. Or am I reading it to (still) try to wrap my head around how so many folks in the U.S. voted in 2016 for a man who praises Vladimir Putin and himself had (has) dictatorial aspirations? Or do I feel it necessary to read this because of the ways in which anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and racism persist, decades after Nazi Germany?

All of the above.

Here are just a few quotations from The Origins of Totalitarianism:

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

Another:

Practically speaking, the totalitarian ruler proceeds like a man who persistently insults another man until everybody knows that the latter is his enemy, so that he can, with some plausibility, go and kill him in self-defense.”

(This is exactly what Putin is doing in Ukraine—claiming self-defense as he launches unprovoked attacks—and also descriptive of Trump’s unprovoked verbal abuse toward others, whom he then labels enemies/rivals.)

And this sobering line:

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

Let me know in the comments if you’ve read Arendt or anything else on totalitarianism.