Ideally I want to get it right. To present an accurate and authentic representation of reality as I see it, to the greatest extent possible in a single life. "Ideally" is doing the heavy lifting here though. The end goal is to get it right, but the process itself involves the resignation that the end goal will never be reached. That resignation is part of the method, and more specifically, part of the technique.
You wont find here something that resembles the capital "T" Truth, but a process which is the constant cultivation of a particular way of thinking, a cultivation that involves constant repetition and exertion. I might be inspired, or have some idea stuck in my mind and so I write it up and it gets elaborated and left to sit.
Then I'll move on and continue reading, listening, watching, experiencing, and living, and then things will change as new information and ideas come in, and I have new experiences. I'll read and listen to news and history, watch media, play games, play music, read the writings of others, consume theory, read scientific literature, listen to mystics, have mystical experiences, engage in physical labor and craft, engage in social activities, eat good food, drink good beer, and on and on down the line of experiences, and within each experience there may be something interesting to grab into, and then that too goes into the analysis. And so I write it up again. And then go do it all again. And then write ever more after that, again.
And then when something gets written down, and sits, and is represented back at me, I think on it further, and then can qualify it and further advance the analysis. It kind of reminds me of woodworking, whether we are talking about doing things by hand or by machine. You make the rough cut first, and then advance progressively into finer tools and techniques as you get closer to a finished form.
You discriminate the needed materials, a tree is felled, and an approximate size of the log is sawed for what you need. The log is milled by a big bandsaw, or else split by hand, and then it is roughly cut with saws or axes, and then planed or smoothed out with broad axes, draw knives, carving knives, and so on, with smaller and finer tools handling the detail work until the final sanding and finishing.
And then you have something that is finished, but not perfect. It might have flaws, possibly glaring ones, or you might just have another purpose for next time, and then the whole process is begun again from the beginning, again and again, and it gets better in smaller cycles in the form of finer elaboration within the method, and it also gets better in larger cycles, in the form of experience and further mastery of the whole method and related techniques.
Back to the writing, a blog is actually a great medium for this; something in between a journal and a standing work. I mentioned attempting some sort of work sometime. Maybe one of these days, but it will be a different beast.
This way of thinking and doing though is appropriate (in my opinion) to an increasingly chaotic world. You build huge crystalline ideological cathedrals when the foundations are relatively stable, and you can repeatedly elaborate some sort of continuous structure based on the confidence that you can pick it up and resume it in its previous shape.
But when everything is in the process of crumbling and transforming, with dominant structures of knowledge and living crumbling along with them, there is a widespread notion of disintegrating certainties and faiths. And so one way to cope with this is to place stock not necessarily in the structure, but in the process of continually reproducing structure, retaining a flexibility to do it all again, and do it well, if it all falls apart.
We're in good company here. You see this instinct in the Cynics and then in the Stoics in a war-torn Greece, preaching of letting earthly possessions and commitments go in the ruinous aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, or in the Buddhists with their colorful sand art which they would wipe away after they were finished, starting anew. And I could go on with countless examples of countless mystic practices in particular, which flourish in chaotic times of discord.
And though it seems pretty rough out there now, we're just getting started.
