The Magician's Nephew is the first book that had me thinking about what it would be like to be a writer.

There was a moment when I kind of felt the presence of CS Lewis behind the world I was inhabiting as if he were Aslan - I knew he was there, pulling the strings as it were, but it seemed so real. So the thought was something like: I could never do this, I can't fit all this in my head, I wouldn't have the talent. Ever. But I wished I could, and thought maybe I should write. I thought maybe I can write short stories, not whole novels.

That was 2nd grade. Or maybe 3rd grade. I kept rereading those books. It might not have been the first time through.

When I was in high school, my tendency to wait until the last minute and scramble evolved. I wrote some papers that turned out well by staying up all night. But then it stopped working well. And then it stopped working. I'd stay up all night trying to force myself to get started. Then I'd go to school feeling like hell. Then later it was that I'd go to school and get punished in every class for everything. Because I was too out of it to manage the frustration of choosing which I'm-way-behind-on-this pile to start, and then find a working pencil. And then use it. And keep using it. So I was in a painful free fall for a while.

What happened was that my HPA axis got overwhelmed and numbed. This is typically called depression. You experience so much panic that in exhaustion you stop responding even to panic. It's like a drug tolerance, only the "drug" is adrenaline or panic - what you were previously relying on to kick you into gear. For a while caffeine - or even the initial boost of missing a first night of sleep - can perk you back toward pseudo-normality. But then it doesn't really work either. Then nothing works. (It's like kicking a dead horse, only "kicker" is the world, seemingly all of it, and "horse" is you.)

So - it turned out I had a sleep disorder - I'm not just a night owl but kind of irregular about that, too, so it's tough to schedule - I also can't keep to much of a consistent pattern. And it turned out I'd run into major depression. Obviously.

But the core of what was going on there was actually ADHD. That took me longer to ascertain. (Even after the diagnosis, I wasn't sure for many years.)

Staying up all night to try to force yourself to focus, using caffeine, and not even managing to focus and get it done. Doing this many times and hating yourself for it.

That's ADHD. It sucks.

But it's also kinda cool in some ways - I mean, if it doesn't kill you, etc.

I just did exactly the same thing with a job interview I'm about to call off, because I'm tired and have prepared nothing and am not into masochism actually. If it'll be like this the first time, knowing me it isn't going to get much better. If I couldn't put the slides together last night, in this case that's because I don't give a fuck about putting together slides and I cannot manufacture giving a fuck about slides. If I did care about these particular slides enough, I might have done it - might have. But I know that I do not care about them. That bodes poorly for the job. To do the job, you have to actually do it - and be able to get yourself to do it with some kind of predictability.

Different people have different mental styles. With me, I think it's really important to hear what people actually say - before you try to interpret why, and read between the lines, and follow implications. It's so common it's maybe even the normal thing to listen for WHY a person says a thing, and often then ignore WHAT they actually said... or else address it in an unfair, underhanded, too sure, or half-baked way. We assume the motives are the main thing, and we assume we know what those are.

It seems to me that telling someone WHY they said a true thing (or a likely/plausible/understandable thing), and focusing on that, is an express lane to trouble. It's just going to lead to bad conversations.

Now, you can address why they said the thing *as well*. But I think it really behooves everyone to address WHAT's actually said at face value. If we aren't doing that, we aren't having a proper conversation. It's always going to feel unfair if people aren't actually responding to each other directly. It's talking past each other.

Ultimately, you never know exactly why a person says a thing. Let them illuminate you on that. Don't try to dictate to them why they said it. That's going to come across as conversationally gross. You might be right, but the truth is you cannot be sure, so they are the main authority, and you are there to suggest motives inside themselves they might not have noticed or admitted out loud. But I think by far the best way to do so is in the context of listening to them carefully and treating them like real people. You don't get far with people by trying to stick a pin through them or superglue them to the worst interpretation. Even if the worst interpretation is correct, there were probably other motives and factors, so you'd still likely be (over)simplifying. Until you understand it how they do, you don't completely understand it - where "it" is what they're saying and why.

It's much less important to me why a person SAYS something than why they BELIEVE it. That is, I want to know their evidence and logic and experience. Just the fact a person thinks something is pretty meaningless to me. Who cares? Everyone thinks stuff. Everyone who's ever been wrong thought stuff - and it was wrong. Thinking a thing is not important, in a sense. But WHY you THINK that? Here's where you can make a real difference.

I'm much more interested in THAT why than in the why that gets a person to speak up in the first place. People are free to speak. They don't need to justify speaking in the first place, and you don't need to know exactly why they're speaking. In a sense it isn't really your business. By all means be interested. Even ask. Why not? But if you can't listen to someone until you know the why of their speaking up, or if your interpretation of the why of their speaking up makes you unable to focus on their actual, expressed words and sense - then I think you aren't really listening. You're half-listening and then imposing. And that's all too human. It's very normal. I just happen to think it's a mistake, because I've seen what it regularly leads to, and how much better things are when you use a better method. My why here is personal experience. But on some level isn't it always?

I actually tend to think of myself as a writer, and I just use a broader brush about it - I mean if I'm teaching in person, that's a kind of writing, if I'm coding, that's a kind of writing, if I'm making music, that's a kind of writing, and obviously if I'm writing a post or essay or story or poem, that's a kind of writing. I'm a writer. But I write in different formats and prefer it that way.

Sometimes I write a poem and even though my poem blog is hidden these days, I find the poem too raw, too honest, too exposing. Heartfelt doesn't make it art. So I'll save it as a draft, not publish it to my poem blog. I can't stand the idea of someone actually reading it.

Eventually, though, I'll probably hit "publish." With a few weeks or months of distance, I don't feel so extremely emotionally autopsied. Maybe it's ok to let people - even the imaginary people who can find my poem blog and would actually want to read it - see the reality.

In writing, or really any art, the trick is to give just enough information that brains fill in the rest. When you start brains filling in, they experience things like excitement, intrigue, suspense, wonder.

In any expression, there are really 4 layers:

1. made explicit
2. automatically intuited (the audience might even think this was made explicit)
3. can be figured out
4. will probably never be figured out

If you can maximize the second one, you're doing really well.

You can't offend me into believing you aren't human. Offending me doesn't make me stupid or insane. You are human. Offense is irrelevant to that point.

So no, even the people guilty of the very worst things do not become inhuman in my mind. Maybe sometimes temporarily. The guy who decapitated a journalist for ISIS in 2014 - Jesus Christ. I couldn't/wouldn't watch that, and I felt something we can agree to call hate. But I recognized anger+disgust, two feelings put together, knew what this was, knew why, and moved on.

Hitler was human. I imagine I would dislike him if I met him. And I detest what he stood for and what he did with his time on Earth. But I am not one of these people who think the worst actions magically make him not human.

I find it important to say this kind of thing because I've learned that if you aren't very clear on it, most people will not get it. And that can actually hurt sometimes, temporarily, at least. It seems weird to me that someone wouldn't get it, but it's going to happen constantly, so you'd better get there early and do something about it.

If not, you'll have way too many conversations in which someone is angry with you because you are not acting as if some other person, guilty of one misdeed or another, is inhuman. No, you see, when you get angry with me about this, it seems you're focusing on the wrong thing. It isn't that I believe that person's actions weren't bad enough to be called thoroughly objectionable or possibly downright evil or completely fucking evil. It's that none of that makes me see a person as inhuman. Ever. When I say I see Hitler as human, if you think that has any iotas to do with approving of his evil, or with disapproving any less, then you are simply mistaken. I use Hitler as an example of the utmost evil. But there *is* no evil that means a human is not a human. That isn't how it works. (That's what I think, anyway.) That's all. I'm simply being honest about how reality appears to be when you stop trying to project your ideas on it and let reality speak for itself.

So I'm going to suggest an experiment. You may not like it, you may not do it, but anyway, I'm going to suggest it.

Imagine another version of yourself, the same in every way except one: this other version of yourself murdered someone.

You think that isn't possible?

You might think it's impossible. Or you'd grant it isn't impossible, but you would never choose that, so it isn't really possible. But it's possible, you just wouldn't choose it. You want credit for that. And - ok, good, I'm glad we got that out of the way. Credit given. Please, please deserve the credit always.

But the thing is, it's possible. You could be confused enough, your judgment or intelligence could be affected enough. And if it were your judgment that was off, you'd probably imagine today that you must have totally lost your mind - so much so that you'd no longer really be yourself. Right?

Well, that's a nice way you have of protecting your ego.

The truth is, it's possible. And losing your judgment in this matter could mean something subtle. Imagine a few nerves stop firing. Just... a few in the right places. Or the wrong places. With just the right links - or the wrong links - in your mind clipped away, you could look and act and feel just the same, yet... you'd also become a murderer.

We don't really want to imagine this, most of us, most of the time. That's more than understandable. I don't enjoy this thought experiment myself. At times it's made me very uncomfortable. Do I really enjoy telling you - and implying about myself - that we could be murderers without being much different? And we'd be just as much ourselves in every other way? It makes me uncomfortable to think, and uncomfortable to say. And I don't particularly want to make you uncomfortable, either. But I do think it needs saying.

I'm very grateful for whatever connections exist in my mind to prevent me from doing bad things, and make me want to do good things. They're enormously useful, and if I lost those connections, I really hope I'd be put in containment or out of my own misery... before I did any real damage.

But the thing is, I'm grateful because I know they - those brain connections - didn't have to be there. It could have been another way. I'm fortunate that it's this way. I myself am fortunate. My being a good person, a decent person, understanding, considerate, helpful, honest, non-judgmental, etc - all of these are things that in part were given to me. It could have been another way. And recognizing that makes me realize there are others less fortunate.

Just as some are less fortunate and born in poverty, or with an illness that prevents their earning a living, in much that same way, others are less fortunate because they are more likely by nature (sociopathy, etc) to become criminals. We have to hold people - and ourselves - responsible for actions. But that's a practical concern. It doesn't change the fact. Empathy, self-control, and moral judgment are natural capacities that are unevenly distributed among individuals. That it's inconvenient to consider the fact, or difficult from some policy or messaging perspective, doesn't make it the slightest hint any less a fact.

And ultimately, I think we make the most progress by understanding the facts, not from playing image games about what's acceptable to say out loud.