Fundamentals

One thing you learn at university is that you should start every essay by saying what it is that you are going to argue and why you find the need to do so. This last part is especially true when it comes to dissertations of any kind, where it is you, the student, who has to come up with the title by yourself. In sum, you're supposed to convince the reader that what you are going to say next matters for a reason. In a way, this is what this article is about. I shall simply call it, fundamentals.

            Let me try to be a little bit clearer. A question that haunts me is why do I even bother to write? Why am I writing this article right now? Why do I write any article at all? When I was at uni this didn't seem like a question at all. I wrote because I was supposed to, I didn't have any other choice. If I didn't write, I would fail and never graduate. So when you are a student, writing is absolutely logical, since it fulfills a very clear, and essential purpose. The problem is, I'm not a student any more. The same could be said about a teacher or a researcher (they are often the same person anyway) at University. The teacher writes in order to receive a paycheck at the end of the month. He doesn't need any more justification than that because that alone would be good enough. Once again, we see that in the teacher's case writing is both logical and essential.

            When you leave the realm of academia however, things begin to get a little bit tricky. A little bit less obvious. There is of course the professional writer, who writes for money. The professional writer gets paid to write and this is what justifies his work. As long as he gets money, as long as he can make a living out of it, writing in his case is justified. This mostly applies to the writers of stories though. After all, how many non academic philosophers out there get paid for their work? Very few if any I would say. You have all those self-help writers of course but I don't wanna discuss that here because I have trouble even calling them writers at all.

            Things get even trickier when money is out of the equation. You are then left with lunatics like me, that write even though they don't have any single objective purposes in mind while they write. No one is ever going to pay me for writing this, that is a certainty. And here I am, wasting yet another hot afternoon in Rio typing at this keyboard. And even I wonder, why do I bother to do it?

            That being said, I'm hardly the only one in this position. Think about all the bloggers typing out their thoughts right now throughout the virtual, multilingual hyperspace twenty first centurers inhabit part-time. Filing their blogs with stories and thoughts, documenting either their lives or their interests with the help of this new technology. And you gotta wonder, why do they all do it?

            Assuming that we aren't all crazy, there must be something to it. Something that goes beyond the need to get good grades or to get a paycheck at the end of the month. Maybe money isn't everything after all, especially when it comes to writers. This one realization alone shouldn't be underestimated since it seems to disprove the theory that money validates someone as a worthy writer. After all, if money isn't everything a writer is after then even if he doesn't get any money that can't possibly mean that he has failed in his intent. After all it wasn't money he was after in the first place, so how can he be blamed for not getting money with his work? One can't possibly be deemed as a failure by not achieving what one isn't after.

            Yet, if it isn't money what people like me are after, what is it then? One option is that they simply want to share the events of their lives, their interests or their thoughts with other people, mostly people that are relatively close to them like friends, family and other acquaintances but maybe total strangers too. I shall call this the purpose of sharing.

            I shall now talk about yet another reason that drives me and others like me to write. This reason is just as powerful, if not more, than the previous one. I shall call it the purpose of recognition. Not a lot needs to be said about this reason in order to be understood, such is the instant familiarity most people will feel in relation to it. It is part of human nature to desire the recognition of our peers, be that for our virtues or our actions. Everyone wants to feel important and appreciated by the other members of our species. So one of the reasons that leads anyone to produce something beautiful or meaningful is precisely to attain the admiration of others. In some extreme cases, one can even hope to see his or her name in the history books, and thus achieve great glory and even, to some extent, conquer immortality itself.

            I believe that there is yet one last reason I must mention, even if this one is the most obscure of all. It has to do with some kind of inner value that can be attributed either to the work produced or to the very act of producing the work. It could be argued that these things alone could have enough value as to justify the activity of writing by the writer, and thus vindicate his efforts independently of any other persons. In sum, I would like to argue that in some cases writing has value even if no one else ever reads what has been written, and the writer is a worthy writer even if no one else gets to read what he writes. 

            I hope to have proven here that there are other aspects to writing, other ways to vindicate the writer rather than getting paid to write something. If not, I believe that I have at least been successful at casting a shadow of doubt on what I believe is a misconception that finds at least some degree of popularity in our society, the conception that the only valuable writings are those that someone is willing to pay for.