Life's Meaning From Written Word

Things seem more authoritative when written down. Why are people drawn to biographical stories, even in common TV and movies and other media? Personal blogs? Etc? The written word has a magical property.

I am in the middle of a long blog post that I've been working on about 9/11, technology, god, philosophy, and transhumanism. (It will probably become a series of blog posts; it's already really long.) In it, I share some personal experiences I had on and after 9/11/2001. It is odd reading about my life in the third person, as I read and re-read, editing and improving my drafts.

There's some kind of ... "truth duality" when a person writes non-fiction prose. What I mean is that accounts of real events both have literal non-fiction truth as well as fictional existence. Both are "true", in different senses, and inherently pollute each other - such is the nature of communication.

Non-fiction is, in the simple sense, "truth". It's true, because it happened. It is, of course, also simply a perspective (or set of perspectives) of a real-life happening. It is an observation, however objective, but still only just part of the truth. Even if the part of the truth is strictly independently verified facts, the choice of what is written, what order they are presented, juxtapositions, and other factors all are new - they are additional to the real event.

For that matter, the real event itself is lived through via a variety of perspectives. Human lives are, if nothing else, a series of relationships with other beings. How you view and judge a person can only be seen through their interaction with others. Alone, a human is incapable of any good or bad actions. If a human has no one else to care for, to be considerate of, etc - it is just a mind game with physical ramifications only to that person. Where are ethics and morals involved there? The only "sin" would be to give up and kill oneself rather than survive and experience life.

Therefore, even "real events" take on an air of fiction - of perspective - let alone the result of observation subsequently documenting "real events". Thus, any written story of a real event is both non-fiction and fiction. And the fictional parts are true - in the sense of any work of art (in this case, writing) is "true", or "real".

So when I read about myself, even from my own account, I realize that it is a biased telling of a story. It is incomplete in correlation to real events, and yet complete as a creative work.

It's weird. It makes me think about the rest of my life. If one's life is written down, and that writing down process inherently making it more interesting, than can we just imagine our lives being told as a story, and thus think of our lives as more meaningful and interesting? I think I just put words into something I have felt for a while.

My life is an adventure, albeit a common one. An educated Westerner, socially-awkward teen grows up, takes an interest in technology and programming. Tries the corporate world. Strives to be an entrepreneur. Makes art. Makes technology. Meets really interesting people on the Internet and real life. Hopes he is heard by them. Hopes he hears back.