Writing in the Information Age

 I am teaching my student about opinions and bias, particularly how to detect bias in news stories and essays. One thing I have been reflecting on is how glutted I can be with information, and how the act of writing sometimes can help me better focus and reflect on what's relevant and not so relevant. 

   Sifting through information is sometimes one of the great virtues about writing. We often get bombarded with so many layers of data, to the point where we neither know where we stand with it nor how we organize it in our minds. Is it even important information? In an age where we are being distracted by questions about whether Canada will become the 51st state or not, we may fail to realize that some questions demand more attention than others because they have more impact and meaning. 

    What is is specifically about writing that can help offset information overload? One obvious reason is that the simple act of writing can help dispel wandering thoughts, sequencing them into something that has polish and some degree of organization or linearity. Secondly, we can use the structure of the writing to figure out what arguments or bits of information are more meaningful and impactful. As a writer, I start to take agency for the information I am taking in and gaining confidence in my ability to discern what counts and what doesn't. The information ceases to be someone else's and becomes something I can influence and shape into meaning.

    Finally, there is something meditative about writing. Writing gives me the chance to slow down my thought process and dispel a lot of distracting or unimportant thoughts, in favor of something that has a certain artistic grace. We hardly ever associate something like academic writing as an art form, and it's unfortunate that even some schools embrace the possibility that Chat GPT can now compose all of our essays for us. But when students let the AI do the thinking and writing for them, it takes away one of the best skills we have, and that is the ability to artfully organize our thoughts into something resembling clarity, logic and beauty.

   We often think of writing as a finished product, and this reduces the process itself to a final goal that gets read by an anonymous reviewer or reader. But writing is also a process that's worth doing for its own sake, allowing the writer to develop a relationship with herself that gives her a sense of agency, grace and self-worth. To know that we all can formulate our own opinion about something without having to be swayed by the latest sound-bite, meme, e-blast or other "fast messaging" device, is one way that we can develop a sense of trust in our ability to form independent conclusions. We also learn to slow down to take in a wide variety of inputs to form a meaningful and balanced whole, rather than giving into the most glamorous or currently fashionable point of view. 

For these reasons, I have always positioned writing as a soulful and spiritual practice, no matter what we happen to write about. As long as what we are writing about comes from our heart and is something we genuinely care about, then it channels our spirit and soul.