Yesterday i read Leonard Peikoff's intro on Ayn Rand's Anthem, explaining the probable concerns why Ayn Rand choose Anthem over "ode" and "Ego" as the book title, (though the book is about the exaltation of man's Ego)
For the choice of anthem (as against "ode," say, or "celebration"). Anthem is a religiously toned word: its second definition is "a piece of sacred vocal music, usually with words taken from the Scriptures". This does not mean Ayn Rand conceived her book as religious. The opposite is true.
Sometimes i heard of people saying words are too easy, i think this judgement is made because they cannot distinguish words from ugly boring to amusing and extraordinary, or simply because they only produce the former types. Words are not easy, to express what exact you feel and why you feel is not easy.
Precision, clarity ,brevity, and eliminating any editorial or slightly purple adjectives. You see, the attempt to have that semi-archaic style was very difficult. Some of the passages were exaggerated. In effect, I was sacrificing content for style——in some places, simply because i didn't know how to say it.——《Anthem》by Ayn Rand
Man cannot match animals at skills and catch up with computers in terms of computing. Yet he can make both under his control. This interests me a lot so i reason what makes man unique? First, if technique or computation itself is not the purpose, but some awareness during learning studying understanding reasoning ... >
why m I learning?
what did I learn? how did I learn?
in other words, to recognize/aware that i m learning and how i learn it are the key difference of man with animals and the computer, and different with every man.
To make my life a reason unto itself. I know what i want up to the age of two hundred.Know what you want in life and go after it. I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and i loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities.—— Ayn Rand's writing philosophy
What's the process of such recognition? i suppose it is some descriptive behavior, so to speak, the writing——the ability to organize words.
You may say, what about speaking? i also consider that.
As for purpose, speaking is more for communicating, or seeking consensus, but writing is for architecting in your mind, for defending personal truth. We talk about now but write for the future, which connects to now. More likely you have a second chance visiting your building precisely and refurbish it.
Besides, speaking relies more on memorizing (the computational function) compared with writing. Oral language is difficult to be reused in transmission and requires strong memory. The invention of written language allowed everything to be found, connected and foresee-ably, be exchanged and reused. At least I m not good at remembering.
This haven't been achieved, yet.
During an unexpected lock down, I think of a writing challenge on whatever i feel like writing at the moment i woke up in the morning, in English. The fun part is, i could think of words (verbs, nouns, adjectives etc) in Chinese and find the words accordingly in English, and then structure sentences around them. Certain harmony or even symphony was evoked in my mind while the words organizing themselves.
Today’s piece is about some recent thoughts on writing and inspiration from reading Ayn Rand's 《Anthem》.