Trust in Writing

I have been remiss in writing here.  There are several reasons, all of which which, individually, make sense for the lack of writing, but together, maybe or may not make sense for the lack of writing.

Which reason is the primary reason?  Which reason is the reason I have stopped writing?  Not only have I stopped publishing here, but I do not write for myself either.  Is it because the strokes I suffered last year, which, as I have written in “The MELAS Game,” affected my writing ability to a large degree?  Is it because I began to fear, perhaps with reason and perhaps without, that the NSA was and is reading my writing, and that the government is watching my writing and profiling me?  Is it because I feel (and I do feel this way) that I have written about a diverse amount of topics here, and have said what needs to be said?

I have thought of all of these reasons as reasons to stop writing.  They are all ‘true’ in the sense that I have thought of them, or that they happened, or that I have  perceived that they happened (I have no proof that the NSA passes judgment on my writing, but I am not persuaded that they don’t).

One of the tenants of political science research is “trust in government.”  Do you trust your government?  I’m a Democrat and I like the idea of government and government regulation.  Progressive though I am, I am conservative in the way of Oakeshott: I like things the way they are and I resist change.  I don’t like the advent of technological spying, which has pervaded government agencies.  There are a host of other things I don’t like about government, and I will not list them here for the exact reason that I do not want to write about them in fear that I am being watched.  Do I trust my government?

This fear is precisely what the government wants.  Even liberal democracies want to suppress peoples’ voices and want the populace to fear the power of government.  In some sense the government has succeeded, even over me.

In other senses, I can not take back who I am or who I have developed into as a person.  I have written things both in favor and against what government does, and, being published, that writing can be found and cannot easily be retracted.  Therefore my fear of what I’ve written is mute, and what I’ve written stands for what I am and, in large part, what I believe – certainly what I believe what was important to note at the time.  I do feel in some way that I’ve written in this extensive writing what comprises my weltanschauuung, or world view.  It is therefore correct to say, at least in some sense (and does not dictate the future) that I have not written because I feel that the writing I have written comprises what I have to say.

For personal reasons related to my ability to write, and, even as I write this months after the fact (of a left temporal stroke) I feel that my typing and especially my speech is still awry, I have not written.

For these three reasons, and perhaps a plethora of more reasons, I have not written and have not published any writing that would reflect my world view.