Why should I write in public? 3

Previously, I made the arguments that writing in a nominally-public setting has value because

1) We are forced to do accountable deliberation, and
2) We are forced to tolerate mediocrity.

Now, I want to consider the duality of the character and the person.

I think, to really make use of public figures, we need to begin to dissect the different people that make up a particular person. To make sense of our different selves, and to grow as oneself, we have to facilitate communication between our personae: who we are, who we want to be perceived as, who we used to be, who we are on the internet.

The Duality (n-ality), examples

Bill Cosby, the man, is still alive. Yet, I could write a eulogy for Bill Cosby the public figure.

John Cena, the professional wrestling character, is notoriously over-successful and largely uninteresting and unoriginal. He is potato salad. Yet, John Cena, the public figure, seems to be by all accounts a great human being. John Cena, the man? We have no certainty in any answer.

Ike Turner and John Lennon have both made remarkable contributions to popular music. Turner arguably invented rock n roll, and Lennon wrote a number of decent songs (I'm understating, ok!). Why is one remembered as the man who beat Tina and the other as the man 'imagined' a utopia free of borders and violence? The answer is probably an important one. On the face of them, one notices conspicuous differences. Admitting that it could be a complex answer as well, probably it is a complexion answer in part.

Ok, but my purpose is not to point out the discrepancy in legacy, but to point out how the existence of a single, unified entity for what is actually a multitude of people, most of them fictional, is counterproductive. With Turner we don't know a duality. Maybe because we have only been given one Ike Turner, a consistent thread that makes seamless sense. Ike Turner is only his worst self. But with the mixed Lennons, there is a cognitive dissonance and somehow 'that' Lennon is forgotten, unbelievable. John Lennon could not reconcile John Lennon and John Lennon, and neither can we.

One of the Bill Cosbys is a great guy. That the man Bill is quite the opposite sort of figure creates a cognitive dissonance. But of all the selves of Bill Cosby, what is the the sum-of-selves? We are only as good as the sum-of-selves, which is the oneself. We cannot let ourselves culture a cognitive bias where the actions of one self are 'true', and of others 'false'. Like mind-body, there is not one mind struggling to control one ineffectual vessel, there is just one body. There is just one self.

Oneself

More historically significant examples could be given, but at some level we know that anyone known for any particular greatness, must ultimately not be as likable, as admirable, as moral as their public character. This knowledge carries over directly to less-famous people, and to our own public and private personae. We all have secret, shameful selves in the shadow of our public personae. With the internet, there is now even an additional layer of self.

And in the view of duality (n-ality), some of those selves are immutably weak, immoral, malicious. They are for us to regret and hate. They are monsters who cannot be reasoned with, but only controlled or slowly killed. Or who slowly kill us.

I don't know where my hero Bill Cosby ends and the man Bill Cosby begins. I don't think he does. I don't think those guys talk to each other. How could my hero Bill Cosby accept and support the actions of the man Bill Cosby? He can't, he doesn't. They are estranged. I want to think that!

But there are not two Bill Cosbys. There is just one. There is not a 'great guy Bill Cosby' who is distinct from the serial sexual assaults. Bill Cosby is his lowest self, because he is only one self. He is not just good, or just bad, but he is actually as bad as his worst.

That is the mistake, I think. Moral, mental, physical growth is not achieved by excommunication and incredulity of a 'lower self'. The growth of us is not the growth of our highest selves, but really the growth of our lowest selves. If we purport to grow by incrementally distancing our highest self from lowest, we are only increasing their separation, not their summation.

In the context of writing in public, there is an incessant question of 'which self?' As I have asked earlier, in anything one writes there is always a question of perception, and how it in turn reflects the author. As the writer for a nominal audience, we are forced to consider in that perspective who that author is. 'Who is the author?' is at many times the central question for any critical reader to answer. For myself, the critical reader, is the author-self myself?

So that is reason #3. It is a way to facilitate communication, to unify, and fully grow the selves into one self: oneself.

Why should I write in public? 2

Previously I considered writing in public in more or less personal terms. Is it a great way to look bad? What I concluded was that it is! However, the essential strengthening force of writing in public, psychologically speaking, is the inherent risk one takes. Accountable deliberation, which is to say deep thought in a nominally public setting, is dangerous but motivating.

So this is a tangible thing to hang on to. The poetry of it is this: you make yourself smarter and stronger by the potential embarrassment of revealing that you are neither. Richard Hamming's 'You and Your Research' (text) mentions a similar kind of ego-splotation, namely submitting important results in the abstract sent in advance to a conference, before actually achieving said results. It's an extreme measure! Without necessarily condoning it, this battle of the self with the ego has to be preferable to the notorious practice of cutthroat research professors: assigning two graduate students to the same project. Both are effective and inject a sense of urgency and accountability. Ethically of course, self- or ego-destruction must be preferable to collegiate collision courses.

Wrapped into this is the necessary evil of unpolished work. There is a sensibly high expectation of polish in final works in academia.

To be sure, there is a curve of polish-reward. Devils are in the details. In academic papers, little inconspicuous typos evolve into monstrous wrenches in the gears of reproducing results. However, extreme and meticulous detail must come at the cost of time and effort, which at a certain point must be stolen from more important tasks. This is the equipoise of doing anything well: tolerating your own inevitable mediocrity, but fiercely refusing to accept it.

In the present context, the moral is: to become better (at writing, thinking, at 'life', generally), it is equally important to be able to tolerate mediocrity as it is to incessantly strive against it.