The phrase "purple prose" is used to shame people into not trying too hard. But you know what? I'd say Shakespeare is relatively purple. It's natural when you write to want to impress; it's sensible to make an effort to distinguish yourself and your work.

When I write, I'm constantly steering around pretentious options as if they were submarines desperate to sink my battleship. Eventually I pare back so far I wonder if I'm talking down or failing to trust English to mean what it says. And still I'm sure I come across as pretentious. At some point you have to ask yourself: what does it mean to be pretentious, and how much is that a real problem rather than an imagined one?

I know from many tests and lots of feedback from people who know me a little or extremely well that I'm considerably smarter than average. Is that ego speaking? Maybe. Maybe I'm deluded. I feel stupid most of the time, and I try to go on outside evidence, but I suppose if I really am as stupid as I feel, I could easily be deceived, especially by myself. So maybe I'm not very smart; maybe it's only the Dunning-Krueger effect, despite what seems like an objective basis.

But let's suppose I actually am smarter than the average educated person. And let's suppose I'm smarter than some others who are seen as smart and successful. When I sit down to write - or stand up, or walk, or whatever - how much is it my obligation to hide this? If I'm presenting an idea that seems unrecognized or at least underrecognized, how important is it for me to write in a style that looks like everyone else's style? Or that makes everyone feel as if they could have written the same thing, if only they'd thought of it sooner?

One thing I love about Jimi Hendrix is that he wasn't by most objective standards an exceptional singer. He compared his singing voice, next to the juggernaut of his guitar presence, to a mouse standing next to an elephant. As it happens, I love the mouse almost as much as I love the elephant.

But when he "wrote" - played or recorded guitar work - did he avoid showing off his talents? Did he make sure you would feel you could do the same thing he was doing? Was he preoccupied with not alienating you? I don't know. But it seems to me he owned it, and his guitar swagger was part of his charm. He "wrote purple prose," and oddly enough, that's a lot of what was good about him.

Writers often start out like guitarists, trying to play the pen like a virtuoso. Then they run into technical problems, usually with their grammar and emotional and aesthetic skill. They might fool one or two people - might fool themselves - but sooner or later, they realize they aren't fooling the people who matter to them; to those people, they sound dopey, pretentious, arrogant, incompetent. They sound like they're trying too hard.

When they become aware of this, it embarrasses them so much that in humility they course-correct into an ethic that says virtuosity or any effort in that direction is arrogant and wrong, unless you are one of the chosen few gifted by the gods.

When I hear Shakespeare or Hendrix, I hear enormous skill cultivated over countless hours of purple. They didn't sheepishly quit and hide from ambition as if it were a sin. They ambited.

 

Powerful metaphors do two things: one, shine a light on something non-obvious about the target object or being (the "referent"), and two, hook this insight into what's already familiar, so you remember better.

When a calculus teacher compares derivatives to jumping out of an airplane and integrals to trying to jump back into the same airplane in the sky, this reveals that there's something massively unsymmetrical about the two opposite processes, something far from obvious at first sight. And since everyone's got images of jumping out of airplanes ready from watching television, yet few if any of the reverse (a somewhat shocking image), that's a very solid memory hook. It's the kind of metaphor someone can say once and people in the audience will have no trouble remembering for the rest of their lives. (It happened to me: my differential equations professor shared this metaphor one morning in 2006 and I'll never forget it.)

Something non-obvious about metaphors is that a good way to practice them comes from realizing that basically any two things can be metaphors for each other. There isn't any unattainable pixie dust that renders some things "metaphorable" with other things. You can take any two nouns or activities, compare them, and find links to mine for a metaphor. The dormant aromatherapy diffuser over there and a winking grizzly bear could be compared - it just takes some setup to highlight a thread of commonality (for example they both hibernate, and have steamy breath). The endless parade of answers to "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" is not really a function of a special connection between the two, but of the possibility of connecting any two things.

That knowledge - initiation into the metaphorical mystery cult through a brief demystification - helps you find the powerful ones. It's a curious case of lowering the bar to raise the bar. That's often true of creativity, but to say it's always true of creativity would be a dangerous oversimplification!

Most of the time when someone writes a final, one-sentence "Period" or "Full stop" (with or without drama and a weighty silence) they should take it out. "Period" is not much of a statement. I don't mean logically, only, but interpersonally. "Period" means you're gloating over your rightness. It calls to mind what the villain does at the end of the movie: they would have won, but they have to stop and gloat. So they lose. Period.

(It works better in speech, but only about half the time.)

This isn't some sort of grammar rule - nothing like it. But you rarely prove much by ending on a note that says "I'm self-satisfied and closed-minded." It probably will (and probably should) sound complacent rather than thorough and convincing. The irony is that speakers usually say "Period" about where they usually say "ecksetera" - when they've run out of ready examples and want to sound as if they're just getting started. If you give your reasoning in two highly debatable or unsubstantiated claims followed by "Period," that's par for the course, or sadly even better than average.

It also sounds unintentionally comical. You... um, didn't know you aren't supposed to read that part out loud? Oh! You're done talking. Oh. Ok. That's very interesting that you're done talking. Stunning announcement, really. Oh, wait... you mean it proves you were right? Good Lord, I must be in the wrong building. What's that? This is a mental hospital, you say, not the middle horse stables? Oh yes, quite, quite. Beg pardon. Will be on my way now. No trouble. I'll get the door myself.

It's a style thing. I'm just pointing out why I think it's poor style.

All I'm saying is: remove it and try that. If it needs something, try something else. Try not to punt by spelling out a common punctuation mark. That's like yelling when someone challenges your view with a fact: more volume isn't relevant unless we're having audio trouble, and it probably seems foolish or offensive. I know what a period is and how to spell the word. Also, I heard what you were saying before that. If you really want to call attention to a logical argument that is now, you believe, complete, and bracket it verbally, "QED" is a little more on point. Or if you want to be more colloquial: "I rest my case."

But "Period" tends to appear where "QED" or "I rest my case" wouldn't be appropriate, because the argument is not as resounding or airtight as the speaker would like you to believe. "I rest my case" projects the confidence of readiness for any objection that might come up. "Period" gives the impression of trying to silence any objection without having earned that respect.

The key problem with bothsidesism ain't that the truth ain't always in the middle, even though the truth ain't always (or even usually) in the middle. The key problem is that most questions don't fall along a single spectrum, let alone a single binary dimension. What I mean is that enigmatic, everyday, life-is-complicated-isn't-it thorns are usually far more complicated than "A or B" or even "somewhere on the trail connecting A and B." Just for a handy example, let's say A = "the world is spherical" and B = "the world is flat." The universe strongly resembles A rather than B, but when many people strongly believe B, there's usually something compelling about B other than, simply, "it's so wonderful to be wrong, isn't it?"

In this case, when you step outside and go for a walk, the ground is mostly flat. You could walk your whole life and keep the impression that, overall, the ground is flat, with some bumps and dips. People believed the world was flat because it was a compelling - and partly true - description. It was workable. People believed the sun went around the earth for much the same reason. Neither description is stupid or entirely inaccurate. They are good descriptions within a certain frame of reference.

Now, curiously, whether "the earth is flat" is a good, workable description doesn't have too much bearing on whether "the earth is spherical" is a good, workable description. Both have descriptive power up to some level of realism. "The earth is rock," likewise, has descriptive power up to some level of realism. That last has, of course, even less to do with whether "the earth is spherical" or "the earth is flat" mirrors reality, but we know from daily experience and education that all three can be decent approximations in practice. Earth is a "rocky planet" when compared to Jupiter (yet we ourselves are not rock, and neither are the oceans or the ozone layer). We park the car on level ground when the parking brake doesn't work. We look at a globe for sharper insight about the sizes of regions. Yet the earth is not entirely spherical, so that description is also false if we need to get binary at high resolution.

When A is "truer" than B, a scenario we regularly face, and still there is disagreement, it really helps tremendously to understand what's GOOD about B, and, additionally but perhaps quite differently, what's appealing about it to its proponents. I have no trouble seeing why people believed the sun orbited the earth. Whatsoever... None! It's the most understandable - and relatable - broadly erroneous belief in the world. And if all we can do is fault the belief and spite the believers, we are poor communicators indeed, and maybe sometimes not very good people.

I'm pretty leery of people's beliefs. Your beliefs tell me something about you, I guess - though maybe just where you come from. I'm not convinced they tell me anything at all about the world. The same for opinions. You hear someone's opinions, you get to know something about them - the person, I mean. Maybe. Does it tell you anything besides? I'm not sure opinions are worth a damn thing.

When people call me opinionated, that's funny. I hate opinions. That is, of course, an opinion. How ridiculous I can be! It's a feeling! But I like feelings when we admit they're feelings. Opinions are feelings in denial about what they are.

We think we're being truthful when we share our opinions point-blank. In a way, though, we're being dishonest. We're saying how we feel, and we're claiming that's the wider reality. An opinion, as I said, is a feeling in denial about what it is. And so an honest opinion - taken to only a slight extreme - is a bit of an oxymoron.

When people say they have very strong opinions on an issue, I tend to infer they have very weak opinions. A very firmly held opinion is an impediment to understanding.

Do you have very strong opinions that the capital of Spain is Madrid? Or do you simply know it to be true? Once you've verified that the capital of Spain is Madrid, would the strength of your opinion on the matter have any bearing on the situation? And if you firmly believed the capital of Spain was Barcelona, would that in any way be useful? The valiance of your belief in the face of conclusive contrary evidence would be like a bullet in the knee. It would bring no benefit. It would only hamper you.

When I seem opinionated, or anyone else, maybe ask yourself whether the relevant part of it is my feeling - or else the evidence I fall back on, and the quantity of doubt I've poured like acid all over the opinion, trying to burn it to oblivion. You might want to ask yourself whether that's an opinion someone maintains, or an opinion that isn't burned away, thanks to underlying reality maintaining it.

I'm human and obviously not perfect and we have all evolved to operate on belief, confidence, opinion, feeling. But I always recognize these are provisional. They're things I try - at least try - never to forget have been penciled in.

If the pencil marks keep showing that the capital of Spain is Madrid, in spite of all the erasing you've been doing, perhaps that's because the capital of Spain is Madrid. Is that the same as what most people call an opinion? Isn't it close to the opposite of a strongly held belief?

So yeah, you could call me opinionated. I'd call myself written in pencil and frequently erased, and all the more trustworthy for it, at least in certain ways.

The capital of Spain is Madrid entirely regardless of my level of passion. That doesn't mean I'm never passionate. Nor does that mean we can't change things - like the present capital of Spain.

But my feelings know what they are. Imagination knows what it is. Purpose knows it's nascent.

When a person has something to say, we often begin by casting around for why they feel they have to say that thing. At face value, this might be a good response: understanding is helpful. Too often, though, pinning someone to a motive for what they say is merely a convenient way to excuse ourselves from thinking about the content of the speech. After all, if we can detect someone's conflict of interest, then why bother contaminating ourselves with their bias by listening further?

Unfortunately, that calculation is poorly considered and widely lowers the quality of thought, both in individuals and in group discussions. It's so easy to conveniently excuse ourselves this way; pointing to someone else's bias, or even possible or plausible bias, becomes a tactic for overlooking our own, or remaining ignorant, or not parsing evidence and logic.

Even when you firmly believe that you see someone's bias, you really ought to put that belief to one side and consider what they say as if your best friend were saying it. And if we happen to be talking about your best friend already and you just aren't seeing eye to eye, pretend this best friend is, say, a student, and you're looking to compliment something - anything - they're getting right, to encourage them to keep trying.

You will notice this is shockingly unlike how almost everyone goes about it.

Sensitivity largely means treating others as fully human even when they're upset by something that doesn't or wouldn't upset you.

Key rule: you don't need to empathize with everyone all the time. Empathy is yours, and theirs. It isn't someone's to command.

There's a little twist, though. "I don't have any sympathy for..." is an apparently mean stance common among people who are not usually mean. It seems to translate to an irrationality: "Because I am not going to invest in feeling for you, I don't give a shit about you." (It really isn't either/or like that.) Personally, I recommend removing the phrase from your social field guide and finding other ways to talk and think in those situations.

You'll find it clarifying. You aren't required to feel sympathetic or empathetic, but you might want to ask yourself what "I don't have any sympathy for..." actually means, or establishes, in your world. Listen to your own tone. When I hear those words, they always seem to serve as a conduit of willful ignorance, an insistence on a mental block. It often seems to be an expression of contempt and a dismissal of an entire person; not "I'm not feeling empathy, here" but "this person deserves for no one to understand them." The phrase strikes me as a somewhat lazy rationalization for just plain misunderstanding.

Let's consider a parallel... Listen, swear words don't make you a bad person. Not at all. But if you find yourself swearing every other word and calling all manner of items "shit" ("Where did you move my shit?") or "stuff" or "things," you might want to put the kibosh on that temporarily and use the rest of your vocabulary. If you couldn't say "shit," "stuff," or "things," what would you say?

Likewise, if you couldn't proclaim that you have no sympathy (not so subtly implying no one should), what would you say? Ask yourself whether the question of sympathy or no sympathy might be a distraction from a more important question. Does a person need your sympathy or empathy before you will see them as a human being who makes sense to themselves? Are you relieved of the requirements of decency when you decide you don't feel sympathetic? Can you learn something useful from this scenario regardless of how you feel about a particular person or their role in it?

Sensitivity earns its keep when we don't understand, don't feel sympathetic, don't believe we'd say or do the same.