So, here’s a theory of everything that I’m getting to by way of talking about writing. This is a post that is going to sound very grandiose, possibly somewhat arrogant (though not intentionally), and will also probably get some stuff wrong. Just bear in mind that this is something I was wavering back and forth on writing, mainly because it’s such a strange and grandiose thing that it seems simultaneously obvious and crazy in my own head, so I have no idea how it will actually be received.
It’s not really a theory of everything, of course, just…a sizable chunk of everything. Basically, what I want to talk about is the fact that the kinds of epistemological tools that sit at the bottom of the kind of truth-seeking writing I’ve talked about in other posts are the same tools that sit at the bottom of every other academic discipline and indeed every other human attempt to figure things out. But it’s actually deeper than that, because these tools—the “figuring things out” tools—are the best, most generalizable way of dealing with a world that fluctuates between order and chaos. (See? Told you this would be getting grandiose.)
What I mean is something like this: you’ve got a thing to do. The environment in which you’re doing that thing is stable in some ways, and changing in others. You’re not sure how or how much the environment is going to change next, but you can make a fair wager that some of the stable things will still be stable as you set about doing the thing that you have to do. In other words, you make a plan based on what the world is like—the ordered part—because otherwise, you’d have no clue at all how to start going about doing your thing.
Of course, when you start following your plan, one of the aspects of the world that you expected to be stable ends up changing on you. Suddenly your plan no longer accounts for the world as it actually is, and thus it no longer works. What do you do? In the face of this chaos, you adapt the plan on the fly, working the new reality into your calculations as rapidly as possible so you can continue toward accomplishing your thing.
Okay, so in some basic sense, you have plans based on order, and you have adaptation in response to chaos. Three quick quotes come to mind when I think of this.
The first is a paraphrase of a quote by the nineteenth-century Prussian general, Helmuth van Moltke. The paraphrase, which you may have heard is, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” The second quote is Mike Tyson’s: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The third is my mother’s: “Whenever you make a plan, expect one, two, three, four, five things to go wrong. Then you can get upset.” (1)
All of these are a recognition of the fact that plans go wrong. No structure, built on the assumption that the world is a certain way, will survive forever when the world inevitably changes. Rigid structures tend to break, because the ground shifts beneath them.
Okay, but here’s where things get a bit weird: this principle works for trees. A tree needs a trunk that’s fairly rigid and strong. If it didn’t have one that was solid enough, the whole tree would collapse and die. But if that trunk doesn’t have enough flexibility to it, it may break in a storm. The tree grows up in a certain environment, and as such it predicts (in a natural selection-y sort of way) what that environment will be like. But it also builds some flexibility into that trunk to account for unforeseen but inevitable changes in that environment. And when it can’t bend enough to accommodate those changes—say, when a lumberjack puts an axe through it—the structure breaks, and the tree’s goal (i.e., to survive) is lost.
The principle works for skyscrapers, too, especially the ones built in California on fault lines. That thing about rigid structures breaking when the ground shifts beneath them? That’s not a metaphor. Turns out if you don’t build your building with enough bend, it’ll break instead the moment an earthquake comes through and introduces massive change to the environment in which you first established your plan/structure.
It works for civilizations, too. In this context, too much adherence to a plan is authoritarianism. Too much deviation from a plan is anarchy. Neither is very much fun (unless you’re an authoritarian or an anarchist, I suppose).
And, as I’ve been saying in others ways in other posts, this principle—the principle of plans and adaptations—works for essays, too. If you stick to your original thesis, your original plan, too closely, you will find it quite difficult to accomplish the thing you are trying to accomplish when you run into some new idea and the ground shifts under your feet. The extent to which your thesis did not predict what the environment would end up being like as you went through your writing process—to exactly that extent will your thesis fail you as a plan. You’ve got to be able to roll with the punches to accomplish your goal. (2)
And that’s the thing: your thesis isn’t your goal. It’s a means of accomplishing it. And what is your goal, then? Well, your goal is whatever the assignment is asking you to do. In this case, I suppose I’m assuming you’re being asked to write a thesis-driven essay. (3) The thesis you choose at the start is one plan for accomplishing the task of writing a thesis-driven essay. It may be that the particular environment you’re working in is not what you expected it to be when you began. It may be that it changes halfway through your progress toward your goal. When that happens, you need to be flexible enough to adapt your structure—i.e., your thesis, your plan—without losing sight of the goal.
All of this grandiose stuff is why you, as a first-year writing student, absolutely need to be willing to plan and then adapt that plan. It’s not because essay-writing requires it. It’s because existence itself requires it. You need to work the principle of plans and adaptations into your writing because it is so fundamentally true that, without observing it, trees die, buildings crumble, civilizations collapse, and literally none of that is exaggeration. The magnitude of the problem that is essay trouble may be significantly smaller, but that doesn’t mean that the principle isn’t at play. If you don’t account for it, you’re asking for a headache.
Footnotes:
(1) This particular quote has a visual element, as well. The speaker curls their fingers into a fist along with “one, two, three, four, five,” the implication being that you had better hope you’re not one of the reasons that things went sideways.
(2) Hopefully, Mike Tyson is not coming around socking you in the face while you write your essay. All these different ways of talking about this can get mixed up, sometimes.
(3) But what if it’s not a thesis-driven essay? What if it’s a personal narrative? Presumably you have some plan for accomplishing the goal of writing a personal narrative. Also presumably, that plan will fail halfway through when the environment changes or you realize that the environment was something different than you thought it was at the beginning.
Thoughts on Essay Writing 