Who Died and Made You a Leader?

Writers have never been leaders in the conventional sense of the word, but writing has always lent itself to the propagation of ideas. An effect that has turned writers sometimes into heroes and sometimes into villains. Would Martin Luther really have changed the world had he not written his The Ninety-Five Theses, criticizing the selling of indulgences, in 1517? Would Hitler have achieved his notoriety had he not written Mein Kampf in 1925.

It is ironic perhaps that I have chosen, for my example, the two people who most lend the lie to my opening sentence. It would have been way easier to talk about Karl Marx whose Das Kapital, first published in 1867, precipitated an entire ideology that became a global political movement, or Charles Dickens whose writings not only may have helped seal the ideas of the French Revolution (in A Tale of Two Cities) but also helped create broader social reform in Great Britain through A Christmas Tale and Oliver Twist.

The point is that writers do not work in a vacuum. We are always actively involved in the perception of the development of society both in terms of where it is and where we may ideally desire it to go. And therein lies the reason which made me choose Luther and Hitler to begin with, for the “we” which writers choose to point to is very rarely identical to the “I” they may personally believe when alone, inside their heads late at night.

Martin Luther may have wanted to start a dialogue around the questionable practice of selling indulgences that retro-actively pardoned the sins of already dead relatives but a revolution which would lead to a schism was probably the furthest thing in his mind. Hitler wanted to make enough money from the sale of his book to get himself out of debt but leading to the Holocaust, at the time, may not necessarily have figured on his mental horizon. Charles Dickens was very much part of the establishment he was criticizing in his writings and Karl Marx came from a well-off middle-class family whose values he upheld.

So, were they lying? Are writers schizophrenic? Do we present views and ideas in our writings that may not necessarily agree with what we really believe in? Here I can only lay down the evidence of experience, both my own and that of fellow writers I have discussed this very same issue with.

While we do not necessarily lie, our writing, always, is shaped by an awareness that we act as a filter for our audience. We reflect back at them what we see and hear and feel in them. We create the paths that point to the world we all want to head towards to, rather than the ones we want it to head to. The Reformation took place not because Martin Luther wrote a pamphlet but because the world around him was ready to make it happen. He just filtered their desire, subconsciously acting as their beacon. Nazism rose to power because Germany was struggling under the yoke of incredible fines and restrictions imposed by the victorious allies after WWI. Marxism happened because Capitalism was inherently brutal and unjust. The catechism goes on and on and on and each time, its point is that the change that happens is the change that must happen. The writing then becomes the articulation of pressures barely felt and desires that are left unvoiced.

Like diviners, writers are sensitive to context and produce content that distils the essence of the trigger points that make them write. Because we believe in our writing we can then, mostly successfully balance the contradiction of personal beliefs that do not always countenance the theses we present.

Do we worry that we’re sometimes wrong? Or that we take on too much? Do we obsess over the correctness of our perception? All the time. It makes us irascible, inherently insecure, inwardly unstable. At the same time it serves to keep us humble. When your opinion, ideas, thoughts and insights are bandied around by thousands like gospels. When memes are made out of what you said and quotes are passed around, it can go to your head.

It is always worth remembering that ultimately, as writers, we are only as good as our ability to listen to the whispering voices of the millions around us. To mentally eavesdrop on their thoughts and read their concerns. The moment we lose that, we become just instruments. Maybe we can write well. But we are no longer writers. And just for the record, we are never really leaders.