It’s been the biggest privilege of my writing career thus far to dive so deep into a single writer’s work for a year (and many more years more broadly before now).
It’s also proved to be the biggest challenge to rein in the voice that appears across the spread of my writing and research based upon the arc of Postman’s hope, tone, and transforming worldview as I sit with him for an extended period.
Working with an author from another century on multiple parts of their career is revealing.
No one is a monolith.
We are all dogmatic until we’re not.
As Postman’s thinking about the problems and shaping of the solutions was sculpted by his exposure to new technologies and their effect on culture over time, so too does my outlook and emotional state wax and wane with his analysis.
It’s impossible to walk away from any project of depth without having the scope of the work taint your vision.
I’ve experienced this kind of infection and walked through every other idea, field, and piece of culture I touch with a shifting lens through the last 12 months.
No philosopher is perfect in their analysis or character. Without that truth we create ideologies.
And to be infected by another’s work and view is a dangerous game. But without that exposure we never synthesize our own philosophies…