The First Chapter of a Good Book about Something

I make no apology in admitting from the outset that the philosophical framework within which I approach this subject is fundamentally Christian. All metaphors of elephants in dark rooms cast aside, let us once and for all admit that, in fact, we are groping an elephant--or more like it--describing shadows of an elephant cast upon the walls of Plato's cave. Were I to abandon the Christian perspective from which I approach any topic, I may as well attempt to write these words in Mandarin, or worse, a dialect of a remote tribal culture still untouched deep in the jungles of the Amazon, if such a people even still exists. Let us, then, once and for all dispense with the ridiculous notion that any person steeped in any culture can possibly make any testament to Truth when robbed of his ability to communicate freely in the language and culture within which he is raised.

No doubt careful readers will already have noticed that I have made several missteps in communicating my perspective. Chiefly, that I have approached the conversation in an entirely non-objective manner by beginning this discussion with the use of the first-person pronoun I. And why not? Do you imagine that the writer is an object other than himself? To be quite honest, the fastidiousness with which a modern man is instructed to regard the use of pronouns in writing has been for me one of the greatest obstacles to communicating my own ideas clearly. As an elementary writing student, I was taught to refer to people in general by using masculine pronouns when the gender of the subject was unnecessary for consideration. In my high school and college years, this practice began to be scrutinized under heated debate. Though I hope you will take me at my word that I did then and do now understand the arguments being set forth by those who find the overuse of masculine pronouns to be problematic, I will beg your forgiveness in writing freely in the employment of language that comes most naturally to me. Imagine how difficult it might be for you to write sentences in which every comma must be replaced with a period, or every instance of definite articles be replaced with indefinite articles. Though this could be done, it does make the process of writing much more restrictive than necessary and presents the risk of writers being too inefficient at clearly communicating ideas in an effort to place the reader at ease. With this in mind, let me assure you that I am fully aware that court is now in session and anything I write can and will be used against me, so please whet your swords.

At any rate, I begin with the presumption that anyone who is seriously bothered by a writer's use of pronouns will likely be unwilling or unable to make an attempt to understand what I am trying very hard to communicate in the first place. It is not that I have no sensitivity for my potential readers, but rather, that I beg my readers to bear some sympathy for the writer who is only trying to communicate his perspective as clearly as possible. I will refer to myself in writing, and though I will refrain from using unnecessary phrases such as in my opinion or I believe that, you can be assured that any statement made in the following paragraphs are compelled from no person other than myself. Likewise, I imagine that there are a multiplicity of yous involved in the reading of these words, and while I completely understand that you may be man or woman, child or adult, American or Russian, I will regard you as a person who has made a willful choice to read these words. If you have read so far already, I thank you very much, and it would give me great delight to know that you managed to read this work to its end, for it is such a person to whom I intend to write this book.

And what is the Subject of this book? That is a difficult question to answer. In some ways, the subject of this book is the book itself--a one-sided conversation between me and humanity. Of all the privileges that a writer enjoys, the most basic privilege is to compose his thoughts privately, giving careful consideration to word choice and sentence structure, organizing thoughts word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, page by page. This is the advantage that I have in this situation. You will never have an opportunity to read these words as I type them. You will not get to read the various edits and revisions that I make along the way. You will not get to see the sentences that I have deleted altogether. You were not with me when I sat down in this brown, leather recliner and struggled to form a first sentence. It is possible that you were not even yet born when I began to write these words. Nonetheless, this conversation continues. I will do my best to articulate my thoughts as clearly as possible, and I hope that you will do your best to decipher them without prejudice.

This, in fact, is the basic problem. I have a brain, a consciousness, experiences, a perspective. You, too, have these things, but we certainly do not share the same brain, consciousness, experiences, or perspective. Perhaps the force that drives me to write anything at all is that I seek to connect with you on some level, to feel that I am not isolated, to find something, anything in common with you. Is this not the root of our word communicate, that is, to make common? If I make an effort to find some common ground with you, I do so under the presumption that you will agree to bear the offense of being witness to my confessions. That is to say, you must remain a silent witness until this dialectic has run its course, and I do not in the slightest envy your station in that task. Know this, though, that having written the previous sentence, I have acknowledged the unfair power structure manifested by the art of writing. That is to say, the reader is always slave to the writer, doomed to suffer long journeys at the whimsy of the author without having any say in the course he takes. Still, the reader is not altogether powerless in that he (or even she) may at any time set the book aside to leave the author to remain eternally alone in his pursuit of wisdom.

So I will end this chapter with an admonition: Stop reading if what I have attempted to communicate thus far has not sparked any interest within you, for I have no interest in taking hostages. I seek only the Truth in these pages, and I am not interested in taking passengers who are unsympathetic to that pursuit.