[ngcc_hk]

Speaking truth to the power sometimes is nothing to do about power itself. It is about speaking.

In fact writing is never one person’s game. Otherwise why bother to write. It is also not just about who the author write to. It is the side audience, the chorus in the Greek drama, the reader of the x outside the channel etc.

of course someone has to struggle through it on their own. There is a target audience.

But real life it is never about them.

P.S. chapter 4 of Zhoungzi is about this speaking the power and even strangely it is arguing even if one adopt a zhoungzi position, very post-modern. The speaking truth to power could be just a guy state his position and not changed anything. Just hurt himself. But if the story leaked out it is a different matter. But if one concerns oneself … hence never about one. Not ever one person’s game.

[cableshaft]

> In fact writing is never one person’s game. Otherwise why bother to write.

Ever hear of personal diaries or lecture notes? People write to formulate their thoughts, reflect on their lives, record something so they can remember it later, establish a base of ideas on which to build on top of, etc.

It could possibly be argued that at some point what they will interact with others, and they might use the results of those thoughts in the interaction, and therefore indirectly the writing is not single-player, but unless you're a hermit living in the mountains that's just something that has to happen and "single-player" becomes a bit useless as a definition. I might as well start saying single-player board and video games are multi-player then, too, as I might take skills I picked up playing them into the real world.

Like I've got about 300,000 words in a personal diary. Some of them I intend to maybe eventually turn into blog posts, but the vast majority of those words I will most likely keep private until my death (after that point, whatever). But every once in a while I reread some entries, and help remember some details about my life that I have since forgotten. Also there's a bunch of game designs I recorded that I might need to get a reminder of what I was thinking when I double back to them.

But those journals aren't going to build me an audience sitting on my hard drive or physically written on a notebook.

[hanifc]

> In fact writing is never one person’s game. Otherwise why bother to write.

Writing is useful as a way to better articulate your thoughts. When the thoughts are in your head, it's "obvious" that they just "make sense". But when you have to give them structure on a page, putting them into the real world, you may start to see that your ideas weren't so coherent after all.

One could then argue, "But why are you trying to better articulate your thoughts if not to communicate them to others, i.e. an audience?" Which is a valid point, but I think there's value in developing clearer thinking, in terms of living a better, more fulfilling life.