preamble
on being heard

beginning at the end, a passing virus defeated the Wrath-of-god

The difficulties I've struggled with in writing this site feel like those Wittgenstein described. Each time the end of my wanderings seemed in sight it turned out to be a mirage. Diagrams I drew along the way appear now as illustrations, but my thoughts still twist and turn, fighting against any line I draw.

I can't find their beginning yet my words tell stories of me, and every story has a beginning. This is a start.

And water is wet. Facts are unhelpful in themselves, and so I set out to tell the story of communication, deception and truth. This was my introduction.

I arrived in Finland from London, enchanted. I'd no thought of being tripped up by culture. Unlike Greek or Chinese, Finnish is legible. The country felt soft and the people seemed kind. I'd fallen in love. But when my lover died, the society I'd been part of died too. Alone I found I was incomprehensible.

Words are just noise or marks on a page. Meaning is social and personal.

As a child too I had felt lost. Looking for worlds of black and white, as maths and science do, simple logic became my safe place and seemed the perfect guide. But though fundamental to describing the chaos of reality, simple logic can so often be very misleading.

Facts are unhelpful in themselves. We've not dropped far from the trees. Our leaders have learned how bravado and gibberish sway us more than courage and reason. Scientists imagine their facts change the world, but only the stories told with them do that. Meanwhile the investment we've made in the stories we know keeps it the same.

So I plough on, encouraged by that passing virus, the one which killed the Wrath-of-god. I'd value your comments on this work in progress, my story of stories, about culture - on being heard. ►