I would like to share something with you from my recent adventures in navel-gazing. I postulate that my
temperament harbors a preoccupation with contrary hypotheses and inconvenient
information. The more sacred or personal the object in question, the more
fascinating its inquisition becomes. While in the right context such a pattern could
render its practitioner useful to the world as a slaughterer of sacred cows,
from some angles it seems analogous to a hobby of exploring one’s internal
organs via steak knife.
Sometimes I fear I mostly just harass the livestock (both
sacred and profane) without substantially altering the headcount. Agitated cattle don’t do anybody much good.
Nevertheless, the habit does offer incentives. A little over
a year ago I read a book by the name of I Told Me So. As stated on the cover, it
discusses self-deception and the Christian life. A portion of the dividends
delivered by self-critical interests (and readings) come by feeling myself
farther along on my pilgrimage to the sagacity of self-knowledge. The other
part comes by telling you about it. It feels nice to fancy that I understand my
blind spots and recognize my community’s dark back doors. Naturally I planned a
blog post reviewing the book to share the joy of exposing hidden things that we might not wish to see—or
at least the erotic thrill of almost exposing them. I read an a hypothesis somewhere that the curious
human pleasure in rollercoasters, cliff-jumping and spicy foods owes to experiencing
stimuli associated with danger while knowing that there is none. Perhaps it’s a
cheaply bought sense of victory, processed on the visceral level?
Soon after finishing the book, my focus turned to a new
relationship, and the blog languished. Despite the relationship and other life
developments worthy of gratitude, for a while I’ve felt a bit stagnant. Even
before getting laid off I suspect I was feeling a need to accomplish something
beautiful and substantial, or at least get entranced by a New Big Project. And
then with the suspension of research at my company, I had my NBP: I needed a job. But unemployment
decorated with the occasional failed interview is a deflating existence. Being
new doesn’t necessarily help me with buoyancy either. No, dense things sink.
A sense of ignorance and dependence doesn't feel very nice.
A New Big Project visited me a few weeks ago. The Principal
Investigator of my lab sent out an email to see if anyone would like to help
write a scientific review that he’d been invited to submit. The topic statement
was infested with jargon; I wasn’t sure I knew what it meant. I volunteered. A
few days later as I came into work, I overhead the boss mentioning my name to
one of the postdocs. Said postdoc replied that they would talk to Tom soon. The boss
gave me a glance on his way out. I had been placed on a team of 3 to write the
review, headed by another newbie.
That fellow, a different postdoc, sent me an
article about how to write research articles. He also left on my desk a copy of On Writing
by Stephen King and asked if I could either take notes for him or find him a
summary online. I responded that I would probably read a few chapters and run out of
steam somewhere in the middle.
I feel like the book did me good. It stoked my will to
write. The advice seemed decidedly more useful than the last writing class I
took. I’ll post some basic notes from it soon. Soon I will also be telling you
more about that book on self-deception.
