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Imagine that I am beginning to write a book. I move my fingers on this artifact called a “keyboard,” and words—these words!—appear on this artifact called a “screen.”
Imagine, also, that you are here with me, as I write, and we are having a conversation. We don’t read aloud the words that I am typing, we talk about the plan for the book.
I just told you a fragment of story. The first paragraph is true: I really am beginning to write a book. The second paragraph is false: you are not here, physically present with me, as I write.
In other words, you just read a fiction.
Which is a little awkward, because it might give you the impression that the whole book is being presented as a “work of fiction.” And it is not. It is my intention to write something which, taken as a whole, is (at least mostly) true. You know, “nonfiction.”
I’d like to do a little more to dispel this mistaken impression that I am writing fiction. We live in a suspicious age, such that I’d rather not assume that you will just take my word for it that nonfiction is what is on offer. Better if I can get this text to start looking like nonfiction, as soon as possible.
So let me see. If one is writing a book that is intended to be presented as nonfiction, how is one supposed to start? I seem to recall that there is customarily some “front matter,” and then the “body,” and then perhaps some “back matter.”
The front matter may have some labeled sections; there may be (not necessarily in this order) an “introduction,” a “preface,” and/or a “foreword.”
Since this section is labeled “Introduction”, clearly it is part of the front matter. Is there more front matter to come? Indeed there is, and its structure will be a little unusual. There will be no preface, but there will be three (count them) forewords.
Why so? Because, in my insufficiently humble opinion, the purpose of a foreword is to tell the reader what the book’s subject matter is. And I am of three minds about that very thing. So I shall pretend that I have three alternate personalities (note: another fiction embedded in the nonfiction whole), and give each personality a chance to speak for oneself, presenting one’s own version of what the book is about.
Here’s a quick precis of what I expect the minimal gist of each of those three forewords to be.
The author of Foreword 1 claims that this book is about political polarization, and ways to reduce it.
The author of Foreword 2 scoffs at this, insisting that this book is about relatively abstract aspects of philosophy, especially ethical theory and adjacent matters.
The author of Foreword 3 is less confrontational. This one accepts the other two’s views, and adds a third: the book is also about motivation. Its subject includes understanding why people actually do things, as well as discerning what one ought to do.
Likewise, this third forwarder wishes to remind the author to give respectful attention to matters of emotion, as well as those of reason.
One more thing before I close out this Introduction. I want to acknowledge that there was already one independent document within the Philosophy category of the site, the one called “Why Do Anything?” And to say just a bit about how that document relates to this one, “How to Decide What to Do,”
In this one, there’s a lot of territory to cover. Even before I began writing “Why Do Anything?” I had an inchoate notion of what this territory was, but I couldn’t seem to get started at putting it into words.
The way I got past this was to make a metaphor. Self, I said, what if you temporarily pretend to take the phrase, “a lot of territory to cover,” literally?
How do you get a quick overview of a large territory? You send up a flare. If it’s bright enough, it can illuminate the whole expanse quite nicely.
But only for a few seconds! So think of“Why Do Anything?” as the notes that I jotted down, as fast as I could, before the fading of the bright but brief image that was afforded to me by that short-term enlightenment.
And what did that provide me with? With content similar to pure brainstorming notes { … } with just a little more structure to hint at how the salient points relate one to another.
And that put me in a pretty good position to move on to the next step: this Introduction. Herein, besides some more structure, I have added one other thing. Namely, an orientation—for both me as writer and you as reader—to the sort of style which seems suitable to the subject[s].
With that, we reach the end of the beginning. I’ve already told you what comes next: the three forewords. I can finish this Introduction with one more word:
Onward!
This page created: 2024-04-27
This page last modified: 2024-05-04
© Copyright 2024 by Tom Edelson.