"From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature..." - George Orwell
Few passages have clenched themselves so resolutely onto my mind as has Orwell's opening passage from his essay "Why I Write." He goes on to identify what he believes to be the "four great motives for writing." As I read through the list for the first time I had the feeling as though I were somehow being found out: "Sheer egoism...Aesthetic enthusiasm...Historical impulse...Political purpose." While the weight applied by each catalyst varies both between and within writers, and although my motives have their own moderate ebb and flow, the longest reigning and principal impetus for me is of the philosophical variety.
The largest components of my compulsion in recent years have been the dual threats of increasing anti-intellectual culture and the regression of liberal ideals (one often begets or reinforces the other). Perhaps it is merely my crotchety chronological progression, but these ills seem to have worsened significantly in the past decade or two. Attitudes toward free speech and the civil exchange of ideas have soured, confidence in liberal institutions has waned, and the impetus behind the American experiment seems to have faded from the collective memory. This leaves us in a precarious position where the solidity of our liberal foundations has come into question.
How have we found ourselves in the necessity of such defense of what, to many, seem to be common sense ideas? It has been far too easy to rest on our laurels: liberalism has been on the ascendancy over the last century, and has been the dominant political philosophy in the West over the last half century. There is ostensibly no need to be full-throated, having retired to the spectator's seats adorned with our victory medal. Only the race never ends, and our opponents keep marching on accordingly.
Populism has become en vogue while independence of mind has been surrendered to the collective, in one form or another. The left long-ago abandoned any notion of the superiority of the individual in favor of group identity and forced adherence to perceived social justice objectives. The American right has now taken the lead in the race away from liberalism by injecting into collectivization the additional taint of ethno-nationalism, rending it both the most recent and fervent threat to the liberal order.
Orwell described his fourth motivator - the political purpose - as a "desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society that they should strive after." It is at once a grandiose and simple impulse. If there remains any hope in the literary capacity to affect change, I feel compelled to be part of the conversation. Thus I write.