Sometimes I get stuck in my head when writing these essays. I put them down and look at them later, often to find that I’ve tripped myself up with verbiage, that I’m not really writing what I think I’m saying. And then I have to rethink where the essay is going and if there are really two essays merged like conjoined twins. This problem is not exclusively mine or exclusively for authors in general. We need to be this careful as readers, too. We cannot simply assume that the author means what we think s/he means by using jargon we are familiar with. The author may be tripping us up with verbiage, sometimes purposely.
How many times have I found someone else’s spirit-focused essay so vague and solipsistic as to be meaningless, only to glance at other readers’ comments of praise for how clearly the author made his/her point? It often comes through in the commenters’ writing that they are quite familiar with the material, or at least the verbiage, and this has blinded them to the fact that nothing meaningful is being expressed.
Perhaps this psychological phenom is related to “earned dogma,” minus the arrogance. Earned dogma is the term for a certain close-mindedness that comes with being told you are an expert. Once an expert, or at least considered one, you feel you no longer have to challenge yourself with new facts and information. You’re an expert, a knower. New information feels like a challenge to your expertise and so you debate it into the ground.
When we assume that what we know is the forever case, we blind ourselves with knowledge. Likewise, when we assume an author is eloquently making shorthand of our vast knowledge, we miss the fact that although the words are there, the meaning is lost because elucidation has been replaced by terminology. And that terminology means whatever we want it to mean. So it’s always “Bravo!” for the author or “Screw you!” to the author, depending on how we read the words, bouncing, as they are, off our background of knowledge.
And this is how we talk to ourselves while pretending to be interacting with others. This is how we reinforce ourselves as experts, or just plain in the world of the known, while thanking or shunning the author who might as well be a mirror.
When we illuminate someone else’s words by the light of our knowledge, we risk blinding ourselves to their writing.