The King James Version

The King James Version of the Bible, according the indubitable source Wykipedia, was translated from the Ben Chayyim Masoretic Hebrew Text (Old Testament) and the Textus Receptus (New Testament) by 54 scholars. These scholars worked in groups of five or six, each of these groups focusing only on a few books. Later, representatives of each group met to review the work as a whole. It has been bandied about that Shakespeare had something to do with the translation. Here’s some news. He didn’t.

The KJV took 54 people about seven years to complete. And it is about 80% exactly the same as William Tyndale’s translation, which had been published almost a hundred years prior.

The Multiple Drafts Theory of Consciousness

Daniel C. Dennett, the philosopher and cognitive scientist, published a book in 1991 titled “Consciousness Explained.” In the book, he puts forth a theory of consciousness wherein our consciousness is not ‘one thing’, but rather, ‘a bunch of things’ under continual revision without deference to time. His metaphor is the internet, where ‘multiple drafts’ of an academic paper can be floating around simultaneously, being revised even if a newer version is already out there. We never wind up with the finished product. It all depends at which moment we hit the search button.

A Deserted Island With Wi-Fi

One day someone at The New York Times Magazine needed a cover story, so they invented blogging. The idea was simple: let’s get isolated suburban kids to plug their diaries into the internet. Think of it. Parent’s might accidentally stumble in on their children’s most private thoughts. High school dropouts might become international literary phenomena. The news industry could collapse under the weight of a deluge of conspiracy theorists. It was a big day. Everyone was extremely excited. The internet, after all this time, was going to change the world over night.

Enter the Corporate Blog

Companies were excited too. “With all this free personality technology floating around in the world, it would be easy to make our megalithic profit generating machine seem less like a megalithic profit generating machine and more like a family.”

The Eighth Day

And so it came to pass that blogs, with their quirky mix of confession box and TOTAL ANONYMITY, became just like everything else that has ever been written down, words. Tiny vessels of fiction designed to persuade their readers to think about something, or to believe something, or to respond to something. Bloggers are not isolated suburban kids, man-eating corporations, theological translation committees, or Shakespeare. They are (gasp) authors.

Authors Wanted: Dead or Alive

According to Roland Barthes, Authors are not human beings, but actually the souls of aliens that infect our human bodies (generating disease and psychological disorders) as part of an evil plot by Xenu, an ancient alien overlord.

They don’t have hands or feet or morals. They just have words. And, again according to Barthes, in order to combat their potentially infectious properties or contend with their potentially enhancing properties, we must become like them – beyond the body. We must WRITE BACK.

Writing Back: How to be a Guerrilla Warrior in the Land of the Soul

The multiple drafts theory of consciousness says that our brains don’t even know the truth. Gertrude Stein, despite any other intellectual improprieties, was right: there’s no there there.

So what is to be done? If we aren’t going to find out “the truth” (otherwise known as whodunit) why do we bother to write back and forth at all? A few theories:

1. There is nothing else worth doing.
2. Right now, I happen to believe something, and despite the fact that I know I will potentially change my mind, I feel overwhelmingly compelled to have you believe this something as well. And likewise, I would be interested to know how what you happen to believe at this moment differs from what I happen to believe at this moment as that could be the catalyst for me changing my mind, which in my previous experiences has been a rather rejuvenating experience thus easing the tendency I have toward despair brought on by my belief that
3. There is nothing else worth doing.

THE POINT BEING

There was a post to this blog that was removed rather than responded to. The post was, to my mind, ill-conceived, and I would have appreciated the opportunity to have my alien soul fight it out with the alien soul that posted said ill-conceived post.

That opportunity has been taken away from me. And I am not pleased.