The Futility of Writing

Haven’t written anything in a while, and so this post seems appropriate. It seems sometimes like in the Internet age, everything has been said, and it’s mostly wrong. Take any news event in the last 24 hours, and you will find on Twitter a vast panoply of opinions, taking every possible perspective: joking, chiding, worrying, connecting it to the Grain Riots of 1874. These will link to longer takes, rushing up like mushrooms before the internet’s atttention shifts and we forget all about it. I tend to be cynical, but my cynicism is in every case pre-empted: and so is any other position I might take. Considering how I might want to respond, I’m confronted with the feeling that I won’t be adding anything, and so I usually refrain.

Of making many books there is no end, says Ecclesiastes. Today everyone can publish everything and distribute everything they have to say. In some ways this is good - more variety in media. It may have hurt society in some ways, because when you remove all gatekeepers you give equal weight to every crank and paranoiac. But it has also caused me to doubt my interest in and love for the printed word. Lately I find myself reading more maths, which for all its troubles, is a much calmer place to be. I don’t know if it’s a long term solution.