Analysis

The hardest things to write about are the things you most care about. The ones you want to think through clearly, have a logical progression of thought, carefully crafted words. The things you care most about, you want to communicate the most clearly--un-fettered by sloppiness, gimmicks, sentimentality, distractions. Clean, a truth that stands by its own merits. Because its that important.

The things you care most about are also the ones that are hardest to be clear about. Like the evidence that shows that systematically, the longer a doctor knows a patient, the more likely they are to err on the side of excessive optimism in a bad prognosis. Or anecdotally, the way lovers will long delude themselves in the face of a dissolving or bad relationship, systematically dismissing evidence and intuition otherwise. Or in philosophy, the more an ideal matters--love, justice, truth--the more it is so much a part of who we are as humans, as teachers, are lovers, as mothers, explorers, brothers--the harder to be logical, consistent, far sighted and unequivocal.

So we are left with these paradoxical actions. I care so much about x, i must learn to approach x without that care, so i can serve it with the most powerful tools that rigor and objectivity can lend it. But i must not lose that care in the process, because that care itself is a powerful tool, and the entire motivating process. It is the point.

And so you end up with these funny products. Like John Rawls': A Theory of Justice. A massive 500 page tome completely inaccessible to the average citizen in its lacework of intricate arguments and abstraction. And yet to dive into it, it is astounding, the meticulous care with which these arguments are crafted. This like Kant's metaphysics, Aristotle's logics, these difficult works, rich with the brilliance of their crafters, and so difficult to maneuver. That is what philosophy degrees are for. But then there is a subtext--Rawls, so unfashionable these days--he really fucking cares! Its incredibly moving. This man believes in justice, in the role of the society to make life better. He believes in liberty. He believes that great evils that he saw in his life--World War II, tyranny, famine, cruelty, oppression--these can be systematically addressed, with the right structure of society, one that has mechanisms to ensure rights and liberties and equity. And he undertook the work of illuminating those girders--building the framework of reason and truth under it. If we have a system, a criteria, a way to wisely assess the conflicts that inevitably arise, we can sustain a healthy functioning collective of flourishing human beings.

And yet, it is a book on many shelves. And yet we still have: tyrany, famine, cruelty, oppression.

Alternatively, the project of medicine. It attracts people for all sorts of complex reasons. But at least one substantive drive, all cynicism be damned, is a genuine idealism, a desperation of young students to do* something in the face of suffering. Not just platitudes and wistfulness, a hard action with palpable impact. A care for the relief of suffering, and often enough, at least around here, plots for subversion--if i am a physician, i will have a different voice. People will pay attention. That fact is powerful, and may be harnessed for a variety of ends, but not least of which is advocacy for systematic change for the better.

In the meantime, however, the training to see suffering objectively and act level-headedly is one that may cancerously overwhelm other ways of seeing, so that one has forgotten, that even though caring was why one wanted to do the right thing, the right thing has obliterated the caring, and one is left cold and eviscerated.

Analysis is the dissection of things. Breaking apart complex messes of things into workable parts, to understand its fit, to project the next sensible step. It is necessary for deep understanding, and yet dissection most likely kills its specimen.

It is difficult to write about what you care about. To write is also to slice in, open, see what squirms below--then to name those things, identify them, with loving care pull them out, carving away the fats and grease and fluids, to pin and label them, build a taxonomy, annotate the patterns, and show them to another--see here it is. What they see then is not necessarily the thing you care about, but the way you have understood that thing--they see the mount, the categories, the pins and labels. What then?